Potbellied Star Hams It Up For Holiday Album
The Christmas album is a staple of the recording industry. This year you can walk into any record store and find everybody from Tony Bennett to Elvis Presley to All-4-One to Neil Diamond to James Brown, crooning away on standards ranging from “Silent Night” to “O Come All Ye Faithful” to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
But this Christmas there’s a newcomer vying for the hearts and dollars of yuletide shoppers across America: a Duncanville, Texas, potbellied pig named (oddly enough, because she’s a she) Rebel.
Rebel doesn’t have the smoothness of Tony B. or the lusty purr Elvis brought to “Merry Christmas Baby.” But her grunts, oinks and snorts do bring a certain barnyard charm to “Deck the Halls,” “Joy To the World,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and several others.
Now, one year after Rebel’s holiday album, “The Jingle Bellies Christmas Album,” debuted locally, a distribution deal will take it to Blockbuster and Hastings stores nationwide, says Bobby Breaux, the Arlington, Texas-based musician who dreamed up the idea in the spring of ‘94 and, using his Akai S-1000 sampler, produced the CD.
“I think this is great,” says Breaux, a New Orleans native who plays drums in the Dave Zoller Sextet, a jazz group. “I wanted this last year, but actually I’m glad it happened this way.”
Breaux says that so far, orders for the CD through Haltom City-based MDI have topped 6,000. In addition, there’s a new “Jingle Bellies” site on the World Wide Web of the Internet: http://www.conline.com/pigsongs/.
Breaux got the idea for a pig Christmas CD last spring. His wife, Susie, came home with a cassette tape that Rebel’s owner, Tina Walker, made of Rebel while she was eating. Breaux sampled a couple of oinks, looped one as a sustain note and arranged “Old MacDonald” using the sounds as the melody.
This created much laughter at the office where Susie and Tina worked.
A light went off in Breaux’s head: He took 30 or so samples from the tape, added in cow moos and sheep baas for flavoring, and five months later 1,500 copies of “Jingle Bellies” were pressed.
The next question was how to sell it. Breaux got the CD in a handful of local stores, but he did much more business through mail orders. He sent a copy of the CD to organizations and publications devoted to potbellied pigs, took out ads in their newsletters and got an 800 number, (800) 820-OINK, to field orders. (Via mail order, a CD costs $13.99, a cassette $9.99, including shipping and handling.)
Word of the CD spread, and before Christmas ‘94 was over, “Jingle Bellies” had sold 2,500 copies. Breaux says radio stations from Indiana, Canada and Bogota, Colombia, called for interviews.