Ace Collins - Stories Behind the Greatest Hits of Christmas

A deste Fideles, better known in America as O Come, All Ye Faithful, is a beloved religious carol that owes its existence to a conflict between religious denominations. On March 31, 1925, Columbia Records invited participants of a convention held by the Associated Glee Clubs of America to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Nearly five thousand men responded. Not only were they asked to perform a dynamic arrangement of O Come, All Ye Faithful beamed live via radio to a nation, but also their appearance at the grand old hall was trumpeted as the largest choral performance ever recorded and placed on a record.

Why did Columbia pick the Associated Glee Club of America, an amateur group, to earn this honor? It was all about hype. The glee club movement had all but consumed the amateur musical scene. Every community of any size had at least one of these singing groups. The national conventions drew thousands. Those thousands would buy the recording to show off to their family and neighbors, who in turn would likely purchase it because they knew someone on it. Hence there was an interested consumer base numbering in the tens of thousands before the record was even produced.

The recording giant was also using the Glee Clubs concert as a way of promoting its new electrical recording process, which employed a microphone rather than an acoustic recording horn. The company believed that the recordings would signal such a dramatic improvement in sound quality that the results would awe audiences and thus radically improve its bottom line. Columbias executives claimed that this new technology would produce a record that was so lifelike, fans could actually feel as if they were there as the record was being recorded. It was like moving from analog to high definition in the world of television. Assembling the worlds largest choir seemed the perfect way to showcase the potential of this electronic marvel.

Columbia wanted to use a Christmas song in this unique recording session. Along with Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and Joy to the World, O Come, All Ye Faithful was one of Americas favorite sacred holiday carols. Record executives believed that of the four, O Come, All Ye Faithful was the best song to spotlight the potential of electronic recording, and the only one that could be arranged to take advantage of having hundreds of strong male voices on a stage and many more singing from the audience.

The audio equipment needed to produce this immense recording venture was developed in the laboratories of Western Electric. Columbia brought the men responsible for creating the innovation to New York. That team spent more than a week setting up and testing recordings made from the Metropolitan Operas grand stagea painstaking process that involved having small choirs sing from various spots on the stage, listening to those test recordings, then moving the microphones and adjusting equipment as they tested other areas. Scores of test recordings were made in an attempt to capture uniform sound from every spot in the hall. The technicians were still making adjustments just minutes before the performance of the combined glee clubs.

To maximize the effectiveness of the event, Columbia offered the concert for broadcast to the new medium of radio. As stations jumped on board, the company had ready-made publicity for the record they would release if the event proved successful.

Columbia was also taking advantage of a national craze that centered on men joining local singing groups and choruses. Glee clubs were the rage, and an all-star glee club created buzz in almost every community in the nation. Millions were eager to hear the concert.

The sound that came forth that evening left the audience members in such awe that few had words to describe the power and majesty of the groups combined talents. Though the project was considered experimental, the sound was uniform, the mix perfect, the harmonies clear, and the scale of the recording was beyond what most could imagine. Even by modern standards, the quality of the recording is still an example of outstanding production work. With the old-fashioned horn method of recording, this monumental feat simply couldnt have been accomplished.

The version of O Come, All Ye Faithful recorded by the Associated Glee Clubs of America was probably meant for a holiday release. With widespread newspaper and radio coverage of the recording session, Columbia opted to strike while the iron was hot. The holiday classic was shipped to stores in June 1925. The label proudly carried the news that this was a WE recording, meaning the record had been made using Western Electrics microphone system.

Much as with widely anticipated releases of today, such as the first album by Britains Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle, fans rushed to stores to buy the record. Even in the midst of Independence Day parades, radio stations played the release, bringing the Christmas spirit to listeners as fireworks lit up the night skies. Within weeks, this recording had become the best-selling Christmas record in history.

This was not the first time O Come, All Ye Faithful had made a trip up the charts, but the new version proved to be a monster hit. Sales stayed hot into the winter as it became the most listened-to holiday record during that Christmas season, and it continued selling during the holidays and well into the next decade.

Sales proved that Columbia made the right choice from among the four holiday classics. Scores of critics echoed this fact as they declared this recording the best in history. But where had this song come from?