It comes at us from almost every source today – radios, the internet, store sound systems, even greeting cards.
Popular music at Christmas is our obligatory soundtrack for the season, right up until Boxing Day.
And yet, 100 years ago the Christmas pop recording, as we know it, didn’t really exist.
The introduction of acoustic recording technology at the end of the 19th century was a major turning point in both the consumption and preservation of music, changing forever the way it was heard and perceived.
Instead of being in the “in-the-moment” tradition of local or home-made entertainment, a recording of a specific performance could be replayed for years. It could travel further, and faster than any touring performer. And, because a record was a commercial item that was sold, attention had to be paid by the manufacturer to what sold – and how much it sold.
The birth of the “pop” record was an almost instantaneous result. Yet, for the first three decades of the 20th century, despite spoken word and novelty items and even some early blues recordings referencing Christmas – including Bessie Smith’s At The Christmas Ball (1925) – little thought appears to have been given to creating a mass-marketed song to cash in on the holiday season.
Religious beginnings for Christmas recordings
Perhaps because Christmas was more strongly held as a religious celebration in those days, Christmas-themed recordings of the 1920s tended to focus on the classical repertoire, such as the Associated Glee Clubs of America’s 1925 hit Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful), the first electrically recorded version, or female proto-crooner Vaughn de Leath’s 1928 version of the early 19th century French carol Cantique de Noel (O Holy Night) (originally recorded by legendary tenor Enrico Caruso in 1916).
Even ‘King of Jazz’ Paul Whiteman’s Christmas Melodies (1928), revisiting 1818 German carol Silent Night and O Holy Night, had a highly reverential tone and no discernible jazz to it.
While British bandleader Debroy Somers, with his U.K. hit recording of the Savoy Christmas Medley (1929), seemed to be accessing a new popular taste for fox trot versions of secular Christmas-oriented folk tunes and carols (For Tonight We’ll Merry, Merry Be; The First Noel) it scarcely triggered an international trend.
Perhaps it was the need for upbeat material to bring people out of the doldrums of the Depression that led to the first wave of popular hits with a Christmas theme.
Whatever the case, it started a lasting tradition that has continued to this day, as each new generation of artists attempt to create their own Christmas “classic” or a new reinterpretation of an old familiar Christmas tune – too many to mention here.
The catalyst: Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
But all that was a long way off in 1933 when songwriters J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, on a subway trip heading to pitch ideas to their downtown Manhattan publishers, began sketching out Christmas themes on the back of an envelope. As legend has it, they had Santa Claus is Coming To Town roughed out before they reached their stop.
The song was quickly recorded by Harry Reser and his Orchestra, but could have remained just another fleeting Christmas novelty if the publishers had not made sure the song found its way to immensely popular film and radio comedian Eddie Cantor, who had just the right touch to make sure it clicked with the audience for his weekly broadcasts.
Within 24 hours of its debut on Cantor’s show, in November of 1934, 500,000 copies of the sheet music and more than 30,000 records of the tune had sold. (It has since seen new life in versions by everyone from The Crystals and The Supremes, to Bruce Springsteen).
Alert to a trend, other publishers began scouting for Christmas songs, which led to 25 year-old composer and future bandleader Raymond Scott scoring his first success with Christmas Night In Harlem (1934), recorded notably by a now-unconstrained Whiteman, featuring lyricist/singer Johnny Mercer and singing trombonist Jack Teagarden.
Also in 1934, Ritz Carlton Hotel bandleader Richard Himber was less than enthusiastic about a number assigned to him on a Victor Records session. With only a short period of time left for recording, he was prepared to abandon the new tune, Winter Wonderland, written by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith.
But singer Joey Nash, entranced by the theme, pleaded with him to try just one take. The studio musicians were willing, the take was waxed – and when the pressing was issued in 1935, another enduring Christmas hit was born (as of Christmas 2023 the song was still breaking chart records for such contemporary artists as Chlöe and Laufey).
Swing time: Christmas in the big band era
In 1935 and 1936 the big news was the dawn of the Swing Era of big bands, and record companies were not slow to create Christmas records that picked up on the new sound. What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin’) was a hit for Louis Prima and his New Orleans Gang; while legendary pianist Fats Waller scored a hit by recording a swing version of Jingle Bells, and there were many other tries, although few have stood the test of time.
Fast forward to the early 1940s and the next big trend in Christmas music – Bing Crosby, who had outgrown his early crooner notoriety to become virtually a member of every listener’s family through his breezily informal Kraft Music Hall radio broadcasts.
Although Crosby fought with Decca Records’ head Jack Kapp over what was subsequently a hit re-make of Adeste Fideles (the devoutly Catholic singer initially viewed it as an attempt to commercialize a sacred piece) there were no battles over recording one of the songs from his latest movie, Holiday Inn.
That recording, of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (1942), firmly cemented the warm timbre of Crosby’s voice as the sound of Christmas for decades to come (although rising sensation Frank Sinatra’s cover gave him a lot of competition).
It was a success that Kapp was quick to follow up Crosby’s initial successes with Kim Gannon and Walter Kent’s I’ll Be Home For Christmas (1943) which has long since transcended the original context of homesick Second World War soldiers to become a well-loved Christmas standard covered by Michael Bublé and many others.
Kapp also kept Crosby busy making records with the Andrews Sisters – including more Christmas hits such as a remake of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (1945) and R. Alex Anderson’s Mele Kalikimaka (1950) – and, on his own, Meredith Willson’s ever-popular It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas (1951).
A repackaging of Crosby’s Christmas recordings – at first, literally an album of 78 rpm singles – and later as an early long playing (33 1/3 rpm) record ushered in another familiar concept, the Christmas album, since embraced by artists in virtually all genres of pop music.
The golden age of Christmas hits
The ’40s and ’50s were perhaps the golden period for Christmas hits, including 1945’s Let It Snow, Let It Snow, by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (an instant hit for Vaughn Monroe’s band) to Mel Torme’s immortal The Christmas Song (1946) supposedly inspired by lyricist Bob Wells’ attempts to cool off during a blisteringly hot Los Angeles summer by noting Christmas-evoking images in his spiral binder.
The 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St. Louis may not have been directly Christmas-themed but it resulted in a seasonal classic, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane’s Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, covered notably by Frank Sinatra and Michael Bublé in versions that distance it from Judy Garland original more-emotional rendition.
Cowboy star Gene Autry was the hit-maker for two more Christmas classics, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1949), based by songwriter Johnny Marks on a popular children’s book created by his brother-in-law a decade before, and Walter Rollins and Steve Nelson’s Frosty The Snowman (1950).
And while not too many people have seen the Esther Williams-Ricardo Montalban musical Neptune’s Daughter (1949) a featured song – Frank Loesser’s Baby It’s Cold Outside has been covered by everybody from Dean Martin to John Legend and Kelly Clarkson.
Joan Javits and Philip Springer’s Santa Baby (1953) is the enduring survival of a now forgotten musical New Faces. As sung by Eartha Kitt, it has inspired frequent revivals by Madonna, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.
Bringing the Christmas song into the modern era in the 1950s was the fusion of the seasonal theme with a rock n’ roll sensibility, including Elvis Presley’s 1957 version of Billy Hayes and Jay. W. Johnston’s 1948 song Blue Christmas and Brenda Lee’s version of Johnny Marks’ Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree (featuring Boots Randolph of Yackety Sax fame on tenor saxophone) – both still essential classics on any Christmas playlist.
