''The Christmas Album, Volume II'' is the twenty-second

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...

Neil Diamond Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 130 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has had ten No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 and Adul ...

, and his second to feature

Christmas music Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols or songs, may employ lyrics whose subject ...

. It was produced by

Peter Asher Peter Asher, (born 22 June 1944) is an English guitarist, singer, manager and record producer. He came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the pop music vocal duo Peter and Gordon before going on to a successful career as a manager and r ...

and released by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

in 1994, only two years after Diamond's previous Christmas album. It features orchestral and choir

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orche ...

s by David Campbell, who also worked on the first Christmas album, as well as several of Diamond's other works. The album reached number 9 on the Billboard Holiday Album chart and was certified as gold by the

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...

on December 6, 1994. Note: Enter search for "Diamond, Neil".

Track listing

Personnel

* Neil Diamond – lead vocals * Robbie Buchanan – acoustic piano (1, 12), keyboards (11, 13, 15), percussion (13),

harmonium The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ...

(14) *

Bill Payne William H. Payne (born March 12, 1949) is an American pianist who, with Lowell George, co-founded the American rock band Little Feat. He is considered by many other rock pianists, including Elton John, to be one of the finest American piano roc ...

–

Hammond B3 organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated ...

(4, 7) * Tom Hensley – acoustic piano (5, 6), arrangements (5, 6), horn section conductor (5, 6) * Alan Lindgren – arrangements (5, 6, 9), horn section conductor (5, 6), acoustic piano (9) * Brian Mann –

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a ree ...

(10) * Bob Mann – guitars (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11), acoustic guitar (10) *

Waddy Wachtel Robert "Waddy" Wachtel (born May 24, 1947) is an American musician, composer and record producer, most notable for his guitar work. Wachtel has worked as session musician for other artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, Kim Carnes, Randy ...

– guitars (1, 4, 7), acoustic guitar (10) * Kenny Blackwell –

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of ...

(10) * Carl Smith –

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...

(14) * Michael Thompson – guitars (15) * Jimmy Johnson – bass guitar (1, 4, 7, 15) *

Bob Magnusson Bob Magnusson (born February 24, 1947 in New York) is an American jazz bassist. Career Magnusson studied French horn for 12 years before switching to bass in 1967. He toured with Buddy Rich's Orchestra in 1968 and played with the San Diego Sympho ...

– bass guitar (2, 5, 6, 8, 10) *

Carlos Vega Carlos Vega (December 7, 1956 – April 7, 1998) was a Cuban-born Los Angeles-based session drummer best known for his performances with James Taylor. As a part of the L.A. studio scene from the late 1970s through the 1990s, Vega contributed to ...

– drums (1, 4-7, 15), percussion (7) *

– percussion (2, 7, 8, 11) * Vince Charles –

steel drums The steelpan (also known as a pan, steel drum, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steelband or steel orchestra) is a musical instrument originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists. Descriptio ...

(2) * Alan Estes –

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

(5),

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist ...

(6) * M.B. Gordy – vibraphone (8), percussion (13, 14),

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionall ...

(15) * Jon Clarke – woodwinds (2),

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedles ...

(14),

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

s (14) *

Tommy Morgan Thomas Morgan Edwards (December 4, 1932 – June 23, 2022) was an American harmonicist and session musician, who had been active since the 1950s. He was considered one of the most heard harmonica players in the world, playing in over 500 fea ...

–

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica in ...

(6) * David Campbell – arrangements (1-4, 7, 8, 10-15), brass conductor (1), horn section conductor (4, 7), orchestra conductor (5, 6, 8, 9, 11-15), choir conductor for Ambrosian Singers (9, 11-15) * Walter Whitman – arrangements (1), brass conductor (1), choir conductor (1) * The Soul Children of Chicago – choir (1) * 139th Street Quartet – barbershop choir (3) * The Ambrosian Singers – choir (9, 11-15) * John McCarthy – choirmaster for Ambrosian Singers * The Angel Voices – boys choir (9, 11, 13, 14) * Robert Prizeman – choir conductor for Angel Voices * Raven Kane – vocal contractor * Backing vocals –

Valerie Carter Valerie Gail Zakian Carter (February 5, 1953 – March 4, 2017) was an American singer. Biography Carter began her career singing in coffeehouses as a teenager, and eventually became one-third of the country-folk band Howdy Moon. Though they de ...

(2), Laura Satterfield (2),

Kate Markowitz Catherine Judith "Kate" Markowitz (Born 28 April 1956) is an American singer-songwriter known as a backup singer who has recorded and performed with a number of singers, most notably James Taylor but also Willy DeVille, Shawn Colvin, Mylène Far ...

(2, 4, 7), Raven Kane (4, 7), Stephanie Spruill (4, 7), Julia Waters (4, 7), Maxine Waters (4, 7),

Oren Waters Oren Waters is an American vocalist best known for his work with the backup singing group The Waters, his siblings: Luther, Maxine and Julia. As an ensemble, Waters has been a part of 260 gold and over 100 platinum albums with artists ranging from ...

(4, 7), Wendy Fraser (7), Andrea Robinson (7),

Herb Pedersen Herbert Joseph Pedersen (born April 27, 1944 in Berkeley, California) is an American musician, guitarist, banjo player, and singer-songwriter who has played a variety of musical styles over the past fifty years including country, bluegrass, p ...

(10) * Children’s backing vocals (7) –

Victoria Asher Cobra Starship was an American dance-pop band founded in 2005 by Gabe Saporta (ex- Midtown), and headquartered in New York City. He recorded the first album as a solo project, ''While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets''. Saporta later enliste ...

, Perrie Briskin, Anjuli Cain, Alyssa Campbell, Erika Christensen, Milena Ferreria, Kelyn Huppard, Jacob King, Evan Payne, Ashley Powell and Sara Seider

Production

* Producer – Peter Asher * Production Coordinator – Ivy Skoff * Recorded and Mixed by Frank Wolf * Additional Engineers – Bernie Becker and Julie Last * Assistant Engineers – Kristin Cowie, Sean O’Dwyer, John Radzin and Marnie Riley. * Recorded at Arch Angel Studios (Los Angeles, CA),

Conway Studios Conway may refer to: Places United States * Conway, Arkansas * Conway County, Arkansas * Lake Conway, Arkansas * Conway, Florida * Conway, Iowa * Conway, Kansas * Conway, Louisiana * Conway, Massachusetts * Conway, Michigan * Conway Towns ...

(Hollywood, CA) and

Angel Recording Studios Angel Recording Studios Limited (also referred to as Angel Studios) was a British recording studio based in the eponymous recording and mixing complex in Islington, London. The company was incorporated by James Warren Sylvester de Wolfe on 5 De ...

(London, England). * Mastered by

Doug Sax Doug Lionel Sax (April 26, 1936 – April 2, 2015) was an American mastering engineer from Los Angeles, California. He mastered three of The Doors' albums, including their 1967 debut; six of Pink Floyd's albums, including '' The Wall''; Ray Ch ...

at The Mastering Lab (Hollywood, CA). * Art Direction – David Kirschner * Design – Gabrielle Raumberger and Dylan Tran * Photography – Mauro Carerro * Background Photography – David Skernick

Charts

Certifications

References