"Jingle Jump," Danny Peil and the Tigers (Raynard)

Rummaging through my tall pile of Christmas music on my desk, I stumbled across this, quickly realizing I had no idea how I'd come by it. It's clearly a rip from an old vinyl record, as the surface noise will betray itself. Fortunately, our friends at Goldmine are on the case, having made this record the subject of a Q&A column. Apparently this song was made to go with a toy from the early 60s called the Jingle Jump, a jingling ball on a string that attached to your shoe. The object was to jump it in the way you would jump rope. And of course, there are copies of the record where the band is called the Apollos instead of the Tigers. Goldmine goes on to explain that the song is often confused for a Christmas record when it's not. So why's it here? Well, "Jingle Bells" doesn't mention Christmas either, but you could play this back to back with that and nobody would be the wiser.