O Come, O Come, Emmanuel - Hetherington Singers

Release date: 1971
From the Album: Colorful Christmas TV Show

From the album notes:
Can you imagine what it would be like to gather all together eighty young people from Regina, Rouleau, Riceton, Gray, Drinkwater, Maryfield, Antler, Bethune and even Saskatoon to sing and perform at various centres throughout Saskatchewan? It almost sounds unbelievable, but Reverend Jack Hetherington, a United Church Minister, does this sort of thing twice in one week.

In early December, when the weather became heavily burdensome, Jack called Soundaround (the record label) to ask whether or not we could go to Yorkton with the group and record their second Christmas album at the same time they performed for their first of two Christmas TV Shows. We Agreed. So a chartered bus transported the singers to Yorkton and many cars including Soundadround's followed.

CKOS-TV in Yorkton had their large color studio ready for the Hetherington Singers' arrival. In a short while, our Soundaround equipment was set up for recording their record. At the same time Shamrock Productions video-taped in beautiful color. The results were wonderful for both the TV show and for the record. Several days later Shamrock allowed Jack Hetherington to send the video-tape to Calgary CBC relay centre. CKOS-TV audiences were not the only ones to see the Heatherington Singers Colorful Christmas TV Show, but those in the CBKRT-TV and CBKMJ-TV area were able to see the full color presentation as well.

Technical notes:
This album was not recorded in the most idea conditions -- a very echo filled TV studio and lots of RF interference likely from television lighting can be heard buzzing in the background. Sound was sometimes a little hot when they recorded it and then at times also suffered from dropouts in places which they tried to compensate for it before they mastered it. I could sometimes even make out one of the tape recorders they used making some metal 'click'ing noises. If that wasn't enough the copy of the record I have in my archive was not in great shape requiring extensive vinyl cleaning and further software editing to clean up as much of the buzzing, pops and clicks as possible. It sounds like the Soundaround crew had swapped out their decks, microphones and even tried recording in different spots to get cleaner recordings but at the end of the day it's a real hodgepodge which the quality varied from song to song.

This is my last release of the year. I'll be taking a small break for a much needed break and I'll resume working again about mid-January so my next release will come sometime around the start of February. Have a Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year.

Downloadable MP3s and artwork for this album:
Gdrive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wR6eLx585VicLRn_bECvAd9ylmDLLZCp?usp=sharing (Artwork, MP3s)
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/HetheringtonColorfulChristmas(Artwork, FLAC, MP3s)

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