Christmas comes but once a year, thankfully, but the search for the worst Christmas record of all time continues through all four seasons. Trivia hounds may want to slop the name Phil Ellis into their food bowls: for whatever else the Phil Ellis Choir may have accomplished on the pop music scene in the '50s, the group will be remembered for a side record collectors often refer to by its catalog number, Jay-Dee 782. That's probably so they won't have to actually say the title of the record, Dear Santa, Bring Back My Daddy to Me!, or be asked to name the flip side, The Church Bells Are Ringing on Christmas Morn.

The situation gets worse, as it sometimes does. Ellis and his group are simply the background singers on these recordings, something of an insult considering that lead singer Irene Treadwell was a nine-year-old girl, although she is sometimes confused with an innovative design in exercise machines. The record came out in 1953, a promotional scheme of music industry veteran Joe Davis. Having done well with the heavily promoted Daddy's Little Girl song scheme a few years before, he expected the public to once more fall into the trap and lap up the sap. But Jay-Dee 782 was not a hit, perhaps one of the main reasons Ellis and his group were not featured on further recordings. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi