Jolly, Jolly, Santa Claus / If I Could Only Change Things

This 45 RPM single was released in 1967 by Preview Records, a vanity label based in Hollywood that specialized in 'song-poem' recordings. During this era, companies like Preview would solicit lyrics from aspiring amateur poets through advertisements in magazines, promising to set their words to music for a fee. The resulting records often featured a rotating cast of studio musicians and vocalists tasked with recording dozens of these submissions in rapid, low-budget sessions.

The A-side, 'Jolly, Jolly, Santa Claus,' showcases the eccentric, often DIY aesthetic characteristic of the genre, featuring Rodd Keith—a prolific and somewhat legendary figure in the song-poem circuit known for his inventive, experimental keyboard arrangements. Produced under the pressure of tight deadlines and limited production resources, these tracks were rarely intended for wide commercial distribution and were instead sent to the songwriters as a finished souvenir of their work, eventually becoming sought-after curiosities for collectors of outsider music.