Ho! Ho! Ho!

Welcome to the World's Worst Records countdown to Christmas. The need to celebrate the festive season has caused singers and songwriters to produced a truckload of terrible records, and each week between now and New Year I'll be posting a horrendous ditty for you to marvel at.

First up, in a break from tradition here at WWR, I offer you Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Wounded John Scott Cree -as suggested (and kindly donated) by a regular visitor to WWR, Ross Hamilton, who tells me: "It was released on Pye records in 1977. I grew up listening to this bonkers piece of Christmas music after my Dad bought it the year it came out..."

Wounded John Scott Cree, for those who care about these things, is still active today. According to his own website http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/johnscottcree/ he's a 'comedy singer signwriter (sic) with over 40 years of gigging, telling stories and writing and recording funny songs, with seven kids and a lifetime of cynicism'. Playing live since 1965, Rudolph was originally recorded in 1975 but took two years to place with a record label. says Cree (in his free e-book, A Superfluous Man, available to download from his website) the disc managed a little airplay (enough, apparently for Ross' dad to hear it) with Paul Burnett, Dave Lee Travis and others giving it needle time.

"Tony Blackburn did once and said it was the worst record he had heard all year. That generated my first fan letter from a listener from Yorkshire," Cree writes proudly.

More to come over the next few weeks, but for now enjoy this appalling audio

PS - I've just noticd that the divShare player doesn't appear in all browsers, so here's a link to the Rapidshare download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/310555820/Rudolph_The_Red_Nosed_Reindeer.mp3