”Christmas Cocktails” with Brad Ross-MacLeod

Capitol Records tried to cash in on the '90s lounge revival with
its "Ultra-Lounge" series--albums that pulled tracks from the
label's vaults that fell under some of the umbrellas that came to
associated with lounge including crooners, mambos, space-age
sounds, and tiki bar music. In 1996, it released Christmas
Cocktails, with series compiler Brad Benedict pulling together
holidays songs from those genres.


It was so successful that Capitol released Christmas Cocktails
Vol. 2 in 1997, then Christmas Cocktails Vol. 3 much later in
2012 with a different, more pedestrian creative team. By that
point, Benedict and the Ultra-Lounge creative team had gone on to
Shout Factory Records for the "Wonderland" series, three similar
compilations of Christmas music that had different label
libraries to draw from.


Christmas Cocktails was influential at the time and is still
fondly remembered, so this week I'm discussing it with the King
of Jingaling, Brad Ross MacLeod from one of the OG Christmas mp3
blogs, falalalalala.com.


We talk about his site, lounge, reissues, nostalgia, the
contemporary music that bridged these songs from the late 1950s
and early '60s with the music of the '90s when the first two
volumes came out.


Along the way, we talk about Peggy Lee, who I discussed in an
episode with her granddaughter Holly Foster-Wells in 2021.