Christmas Dreamers: Yuletide Country (1960-1972
It’s not every regional independent record company with enough Christmas-themed material from which to cobble together an album as consistently listenable as Christmas Dreamers: Yuletide Country (1960-1972). The Sauk City label was active from the late 1950s to the mid-‘70s in a variety of genres. Cuca issued much more than country, but these 13 tracks give evidence that country may have been its hidden strength.
The timeframe covered in this collection was an especially creative and rootsy period for country music at a national level; the aspirants who used Cuca’s studio to take a shot at making “The Grand Ole Opry” kept abreast of contemporaneous trends, occasionally adding their own wrinkles to the formulas of the day. Mentions of Santa not being a hippie (and how the jolly old elf shares king of Christmas coregency with Jesus Christ?!), dancing The Twist and maybe bringing a go-go girl as a present lend an endearing datedness to Christmas Dreamers.
