The "Jingle Bells" project is turning into a BIG production. I should have known. Most recently I read on WikiPedia that Gemini astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom
Stafford performed "Jingle Bells" during the Gemini 6 spaceflight, the first known musical broadcast from space. That has to be recorded somewhere. Anybody know where to find a recording of that?

Here is the original sheetmusic from the American Memory Project. Four verses!

"Many Jingle Bells", an 8 meg MP3, as it currently stands, with more than 120 versions of "Jingle Bells" incorporated.

Here are links to RAR archives of my "Jingle Bells" collection as of 20070107.

• part 1, A-D, 100 meg
  
• part 2, E-J, 94 meg
  
• part 3, K-P, 93 meg
  
• part 4, Q-Z, 103 meg
  

Acknowledgements:

• Lee at Music You (Probably) Won't Hear Anyplace Else for his 5 part Jingle Bells spectacular. I got more versions from him than anywhere else and they were interesting ones too because Lee is a record collector and rips at least most of these himself, I think.
  
• falalalala.com is about the best all around Xmas music source on the web.
  
• Senses Working Overtime is another amazing blog come Christmas time.
  
• Echo Nest features a really good Jingle Bells MegaMix, and have laid a bunch more versions of Jingle Bells on me that I haven't even got to yet! I finally posted my collection to pay them off in return.
  
• Recycle Ann Arbor's ReUse Center, where I get a lot of the LP's I rip for cheap.
  
• Ann Arbor Kiwanis Sale, the best source for cheap classical LPs.
  

Here is a good forum thread about the lyrics to "Jingle Bells". The verse about the bob-tailed nag raises a lot of questions. They seem to be describing a very fast racing horse, and there is even speculation that the song was considered risque at one time because it basically dealt with horseracing. Well, I don't know, if sleigh riding was good enough for Laura Ingalls Wilder it's good enough for me.

Only problem with the Jingle Bells project is I didn't think that much about how to do it when I started and now I think I'm going to have to do it over again. A fairly random pastiche was the idea but I'm not satisfied. I think we should hear all four verses fairly coherently, and I think styles, tempos, and keys should be coordinated, and I think transitional material from some of the arrangements would be good, too, not to mention that funny little tag the French version has.

I'm certainly open to advice. I'm going to pick this up and continue it next Christmas season.