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You'll come for the surface noise, you'll stay for what sounds like a child's vocal but leaves a tiny bit of doubt, and the spoken word bit provided by a wanna-be hipster will close the deal on this 1960 single. And that's before the song's punchline puts the jolly elf in his skivvies. Yet another 365 Days Project archived this time by Bob Purse, available for download at the site.

Thanks to the fine folks at the 365 Days Project (scroll down) for this, and a couple of others from beyond the pale. Don't know what year this originated, but curator "The TOD" fills in the cracks: "Hanley is from Pontiac, Mich., just down the road from me. I figure Hanley must be about 75 or he has passed into eternal sleep." You can download this from 365, and you probably should; this bit of amateur country boogie definitely stands up to anything on the American Song Poem Project. It's originally from the album Merry-Go-Round of Life, and the download actually includes two songs, the first one being "Cotton-Tail Boogie." UPDATE: Near as I can figure out, this album is roughly from the 1960s and it has a rapt cult following.

Another troll through the vaults, this one makes a point of noting it got this collection from the back room at the now-defunct Roulette Records. Some of these items are no surprise, as they've turned up on numerous collections. Others are a little more rare. Jim Backus of Mr. Magoo fame and Howard Morris, the once and future Ernest T. Bass, have novelty records here, Backus giving us "Why Don't You Go Home for Christmas," an anti-wife song, and Morris with both sides of his "Department Store Santa Claus" single. The Cadillacs' arrangement of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is the one the Smithereens adapted for their version, the Marcels' "Merry Twist-Mas" is joined by a less-well known item, "Don't Cry for Me This Christmas," and Pearl Bailey and the Orioles contribute a pair of carols each. Little Eva joins with Big Dee Irwin for "I Wish You a Merry Christmas" and the Harmony Grits -- former members of the original Drifters -- do "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." The liner notes don't shrink from criticism; a Vietnam exploitation record by Derrick Roberts gets the note-writer's raspberry (deserved.) A pretty good collection for the oldies fan, with three New Year's songs, including Jo Ann Campbell's "Happy Happy New Year Baby," based on "Happy Happy Birthday Baby," not to mention "Merry Merry Christmas Baby." UPDATE: Yet another collection out of print and commanding high collector prices at this writing.

This group hit three times in 1966 with songs based on Charles Schulz's comic strip dog Snoopy and his imaginary exploits battling the Red Baron over the skies of Europe, then disappeared off the face of the earth. Still, they managed to fuse their three hits into a kind of half concept album, with spoken word radio show interludes linking "Snoopy vs the Red Baron" and "Return of the Red Baron" to the climactic "Snoopy's Christmas." It's way too silly for words, but if your children are familiar with the Peanuts strip, they might get a bang out of this. There's also a non-Snoopy Christmas song on side 2, "It Kinda Looks Like Christmas." It's been reissued under various different titles in the CD era, so you should still be able to snap up a copy.

The deep-voiced Boris Karloff impersonator is best known for "Monster Mash," a 1962 smash that also returned to the charts in 1970 and 1973, according to Rock On. But when you make your bones with a Halloween song, it's perfectly logical that the sequel hit would be a Christmas tune. And so it was, just two months later, with Santa foiling the monsters' plan to destroy Christmas simply by giving them gifts. Speaking of sequel hits, you don't often see artists do songs that are so obviously based on their previous hits anymore -- I think the series of "Roxanne" rap tunes in the late 80s was the last time it happened, and that involved several different artists. Bobby's songs made it to wax with the help of Gary Paxton, who was involved with such acts as the Hollywood Argyles and Skip and Flip. Bobby maintained a career as a character actor and even saw his big hit transformed into a movie back in 1995, and he sequeled again in 2005 with "Climate Mash," a cautionary tale of global warming. You have to look a bit, but this does turn up on compilations from time to time. Pickett repaired to the crypt for good on April 25, 2007.