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Amazon.com Among the countless blues recordings of holiday tunes, this more recent survey from Black Top pits heavy-guitar stylists like Earl King and Robert Ward with more-popular roadhouse belters such as Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets and Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers. It's a great lineup, but the titles tell the story: "Grady and Santa Are Coming to Town" (Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters); "No More Pretty Presents" (Piazza); "Christmas by the Bar-B-Que" (Lynn August); and, naturally, Funderburgh's "Young Girls Drive Me Wild (at Christmas)." But it's Robert Ward's chillingly funky and impassioned number "Wouldn't It Be a Merry Christmas?" that will make Santa's little helpers want to get up and do some kind of funky-chicken derivation by the Christmas tree. --Martin Keller