Warner Bros. Jazz Christmas Party

His ironic "I Bought You a Plastic Star For Your Aluminum Tree" is a signature Franks song that happens to be about Christmas. But his "Let It Snow", with a killer piano intro that counterbalances a conventional rendition of the song itself, isn't here--that's on Warner's "Jazz To the World". But I'll be damned if I can find "Island Christmas" or his pensive treatment of Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here" anywhere but the peer share sites. That's 4--count 'em--songs and this dude still ain't done no Exmass album. Elsewhere on this disc, Bela Fleck does an interesting treatment of "White Christmas". All in all, this disc is a really decent Holiday collection when you consider the fact that jazz's improvisational nature can often be at odds with the fact that a Christmas song (even an instrumental) should be played as straight-ahead as possible. So you will notice that a lot of the artists here are from the smooth jazz camp, whose one-foot-in-pop ethic makes it a lot easier.