Share: "Little Lamb Jam" - Oran Etkin with Charenee Wade

Next month sees the release of Putumayo's latest kid-friendly release, Jazz Playground, and to promote the disk, they're offering a free download (well, free except for giving up an e-mail address) of the swingin' minor-key "Little Lamb Jam" by Oran Etkin with Charenee Wade on vocals -- go here directly to sign up. You can also click on the Jazz Playground link above to hear the first 3 tracks from the album, including one of my favorite jazz-for-kids artists, gypsy jazz swing man Lewis Franco & The Missing Cats (see my review of his disk from a couple years ago here). Chris McKhool's take on "Spider-Man" is pretty cool, and it's hard to go wrong with the Cuban jazz of Jose Conde "Cumbamba." Full track listing after the jump

Share: "Best of Hullabaloo" - Hullabaloo

First a holiday album, now this: San Diego-area folk-rockers Hullabaloo are offering their new Best of Hullabaloo album for free in the month of February. As one might expect, it's a greatest hits compilation and, yeah, it seems to hit all of the band's highlights from their first six years. The band thanks Stroller Strides for making the download possible, though exactly how is not clear. (One presumes the dozens of shows they've played for the groups have probably won them a few fans in the sippy-cup-toting set.) As long as you have an e-mail address to share, go here to download it, or just click on the links below...

Track listing:

Share: "Mama Papa Love" - Renee and Jeremy

I already told you how much I liked C'mon, the second album from the groovy duo Renee and Jeremy, and especially the track "Mama Papa Love" (or, alternately, "MamaPapaLove," depending on you feel about word spacing). Well, I'm really glad to give you the opportunity to download that great track for free, courtesy of the duo. Just use the widget below, but do it in the next week, because by next Monday night, the opportunity will be gone once more... [Ed: And so it is... but you can still get a copy of the "C'mon" title track by using the widget below.]

Share: John and Mark's Children's Record Coloring Pages (and mp3s)

I haven't had a lot of opportunity to talk about John Upchurch and Mark Greenberg's awesome kids music album John and Mark's Children's Record. Well, now I do -- they've released John and Mark's Children's Record Coloring Pages, which they describe as "16 pages of mildly disconcerting fun! Color inside and/or outside the lines.... Guaranteed fun for some!" And, yeah, that pretty much sums it up -- it's like the love child of Taro Gomi and a benign David Lynch. You don't need to own the album to enjoy the coloring pages, though if you enjoy the absurdity on the disk, you'll enjoy the pages. Kids, they don't care -- they'll color anything! And although Tight Ship Records have taken down their free mp3s from the page, the Bloodshot Records page for the disk has a couple available for you (including the previously un-offered ("The Elephant Leads The Way") to try out if for some unfathomable reason you don't already have the disk. John and Mark's Children's Record Coloring Pages [pdf]

Listen To This: "Waiting For My Man (The Santa Claus Mix)

You know, if Bob Dylan can record a Christmas album, why can't Lou Reed? What's that? He hasn't released a Christmas album? But I swear, this sounds just like Lou Reed! Oh, it's just the Bay Area's Sippy Cups, returning to their song-parody roots by reworking "I'm Waiting For the Man" into "Waiting For My Man (The Santa Claus Mix)." And it's free for the downloading or streaming here. (What, "The Gift" wasn't appropriate enough?) Photo credit: Peter Ellenby

Even More Free Holiday Music From Jitterbug.tv

In the midst of Hanukkah, and only a week or so before the solstice, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, it's prime time for holiday music. No sooner do I post about a free track than the folks at Jitterbug's let me know about their holiday playlist. It's a good one and even better, it's a free one, available for downloading or streaming. Music from The Hipwaders, Brady Rymer, Didi Pop, Gustafer Yellowgold, Princess Katie & Racer Steve, Rock Daddy Rock, and David Tobocman. Good stuff (I've already talked about a few songs on the list), downloadable here and in a few cases, nowhere else.