A Christmas Carol - Howdy Doody (1956)
Musical Director: Mitch Miller
Scrooge: Captain Windy Scuttlebutt
Keeping along the lines of "A Christmas Carol" adaptations featuring established characters, we turn our ears to this little Howdy Doody record.
This was issued by Golden Records in 1956. Golden Records were these little yellow plastic records that were about six inches and played at 78 RPM. Since they were smaller than a 45 and played at a faster speed, there wasn't as much room for content. Each side could only hold up to a minute and 45 seconds or so.
But kids have never had long attention spans anyway, and little hands could hold these and they were hard to break and every record player had the 78 speed back in the day, so it was all good!
Throw in the tons of licensed characters they used and you can see why they were popular in conjunction with their sister Little Golden Books and on their own.
One of the most popular characters of the mid-50s was Howdy Doody, the puppet star of perhaps the biggest kids' show ever.
As befitting his popularity, he was featured on quite a few records, including some Little Golden Records.
Fortunately for us, one of Howdy's records was a two-sided musical adaptation of "A Christmas Carol."
Give it a listen and then we'll do our usual deep dive...
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