James Taylor: A Christmas Album is singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

's 21st album and first Christmas

Christmas music

Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music normally performed or heard around the Christmas season, which tends to begin in the months leading up the actual holiday and end in the weeks shortly thereafter.-Early:...

 album. It was released on a limited-edition basis in 2004, with distribution through Hallmark Cards

Hallmark Cards

Hallmark Cards is a privately owned American company based in Kansas City, Missouri. Founded in 1910 by Joyce C. Hall, Hallmark is the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. In 1985, the company was awarded the National Medal of Arts....

.

Track listing

1. "Winter Wonderland
   Winter Wonderland
   "Winter Wonderland" is a winter song, popularly treated as a Christmastime pop standard, written in 1934 by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith . Through the decades it has been recorded by over 150 different artists.-History:...
   
   " (with Chris Botti
   Chris Botti
   Christopher Stephen "Chris" Botti , is an American trumpeter and composer. In 2007, Botti was nominated for two Grammy Awards including Best Pop Instrumental Album. On December 4, 2009, he was nominated for three more Grammy Awards including Best Pop Instrumental Album and Best Long Form Music Video...
   
   )
2. "Go Tell It on the Mountain
   Go Tell It on the Mountain (song)
   "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is an African-American spiritual song, compiled by John Wesley Work, Jr., dating back to at least 1865, that has been sung and recorded by many gospel and secular performers...
   
   "
3. "In the Bleak Midwinter
   In the Bleak Midwinter
   "In the Bleak Midwinter" is a Christmas carol based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem....
   
   "
4. "Baby, It's Cold Outside
   Baby, It's Cold Outside (song)
   "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a pop standard with words and music by Frank Loesser.-Background:Loesser wrote the duet in 1936 and premiered the song with his wife, Lynn Garland, at their Navarro Hotel housewarming party...
   
   " (with Natalie Cole
   Natalie Cole
   Natalie Maria Cole , is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be ", "Inseparable" and "Our Love"...
   
   )
5. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
   Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
   "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is a Christmas song. It was written by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie, and was first sung on Eddie Cantor's radio show in November 1934....
   
   "
6. "Jingle Bells
   Jingle Bells
   "Jingle Bells" is one of the best-known and commonly sung winter songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont and published under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857...
   
   "
7. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
   The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
   "The Christmas Song" is a classic Christmas song written in 1944 by musician, composer, and vocalist Mel Tormé and Bob Wells. According to Tormé, the song was written during a blistering hot summer...
   
   " (with Toots Thielemans
   Toots Thielemans
   Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans , known as Toots Thielemans, is a Belgian jazz musician well known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century...
   
   )
8. "Deck the Hall
   Deck the Hall
   "Deck the Halls" is a traditional Yuletide/Christmas and New Years' carol. The "fa-la-la" refrains were probably originally played on the harp. The tune is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, Nos Galan. In the eighteenth century Mozart used the tune to "Deck...
   
   s"
9. "Some Children See Him"
10. "Who Comes This Night"
11. "Auld Lang Syne
    Auld Lang Syne
    "Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song . It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; its traditional use being to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight...
    
    "

In 2006 Taylor's regular label, Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

, reissued the album with a new title (James Taylor at Christmas) and a revised track listing; "Deck the Halls" was omitted, with two other songs ("Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a song introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics, which has become more common than the original. The song was written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane...

" and a cover of Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

's "River") added.