Evan X. Merz

There is an overwhelming amount of great Christmas music out there. We're spoiled for choice. Yet, we tend to hear the same Christmas music over and over again. The radio stations, grocery stores, and spotify playlists all collaborated to ensure that we only hear selections from a handful of classic albums.

And I love some of those albums. I love to hear Michael Buble, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and even Mariah Carey at Christmas time.

But I also love the other stuff. I love the Christmas music that was once popular, but has fallen out of favor. I love Christmas music that's a little bit weird, but also kind of wonderful.

Here are three of my favorite jazz Christmas albums that you haven't heard a million times in the grocery store.

A Big Band Christmas

This is a compilation of big band Christmas music that was released in 1988. I particularly like it because it's full of great big band arrangements of tunes that have become standards. Virtually every song on here is a classic, but the version in this compilation isn't the one you've heard a million times. I love the version of Winter Weather on this album.

Crescent City Christmas Card

There was a time in the 1990s when the name Wynton Marsalis was synonymous with new jazz. He was everywhere, and you couldn't avoid his music if you wanted to. At the time I was pretty tired of his music.

Since then the world has cooled on him a bit, and I only recently discovered this Christmas album that he recorded in 1989. He puts a unique spin on every tune on the album.

Consummation

Okay, I don't even know if this last one is even a Christmas album. It's by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, and every track on it is brilliant.

But the recording of A Child is Born is the best recording of the tune. So even if that's the only "Christmas" song on it, it's a great Christmas album. You could have a great night just by putting that one track on repeat.