Here's the story of the writing of "The Christmas Song" as related by the composer, Mel Torme, in his autobiography, It Wasn't All Velvet. [His lyricist was Bob Wells.]
....
One excessively hot afternoon I drove out to Bob's house in Toluca Lake for a work session. The San Fernando Valley, always at least ten degrees warmer than the rest of [Los Angeles], blistered in the July sun. Bob lived with his parents in a beautiful Colonial type home, but even it was oppressive in those pre-air-conditioned days. I opened the door and walked in. (Before Charles Manson some people left their front doors unlocked.) I called for Bob. No answer. I walked over to the piano. A writing pad rested on the music board. Written in pencil on the open page were four lines of verse.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos
When Bob finally appeared I asked him about the little poem. He was dressed sensibly in tennis shorts and a white T-shirt, but he still looked uncomfortably warm.
"It was so damn hot today, I thought I'd write something to cool myself off," he said. "All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather."
I took another look at his handiwork. "You know," I said, "this just might make a song."
We sat down together at the piano, and, as improbable though it may sound, "The Christmas Song" was [completed] about forty-five minutes later. Excitedly, we called Carlos Gastel, sped into Hollywood, played it for him, then for Johnny Burke, then for Nat Cole, who fell in love with the tune. It took a full year for Nat to get into a studio to record it, but his record finally came out in the fall of 1946; and the rest could be called our financial pleasure.
A humorous footnote: when Nat initially recorded "The Christmas Song," he sang the last line of the bridge: "To see if *reindeers really know/How to fly." After the first pressings were released, and the song became a hit, we pointed out his grammatical error. Nat, a true gentleman, and a dogged perfectionist, stewed over this mistake, and, sure enough, at the end of another recording session of his, with the same-sized orchestra at hand, he rerecorded our song, properly singing "reindeer." The second version is virtually indentical to the first, but those early first pressings have become collectors' items.
....
[Source: It Wasn't All Velvet. by Mel Torme, c1988, Viking Penguin Inc., New York, pp. 83-84.]
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Links:
- Wikipedia article on Mel Torme
- MyMusicBase biography of Mel Torme
- Wikipedia article on The Christmas Song
T 11 Dec Actual Route: PA VA Hosp - Palo Alto Branch Lib - Santa Cruz
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