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The Christmas Song
byNat King Cole
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Mel Torme and Bob Wells were songwriting partners, and used to take turns going over to each others homes to write songs. One particularly hot July day, Mel drove over to Bob's house in Teluca Lake, Ca., and when he got there he walked into the house, couldn't find Bob, but found a spiral note pad of paper with some words on it - "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, Yuletide Carols being sung by a choir, folks dressed up like Eskimos." When Mel found Bob, he asked him "What's this?", and Bob said "it's so blistering hot here,and thought it would be fun to see if I could write something about a totally different season, the winter season, Christmas season, and see if I could mentally, virtually cool off." Mel said "not only have you also cooled me off, but I think you've got a song here!" And the duo wrote the rest of the song in about 35 minutes.
Nat King Cole recorded this for the first time in 1946 with his group The Nat King Cole Trio. The record company had them re-record it with a string section, and Cole recorded it again in 1953 with Nelson Riddle. Capitol Records released it in December of 1960. It only stayed on the chart for a couple of weeks, but became a gold record! It was re-released again in 1962, and became a classic among holiday hits. (thanks, Jeff - Boston, MA)
This was featured on the soundtrack of the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can, which was directed by Steven Speilberg. In the film, the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks end up speaking with each other every Christmas Eve.
More Christmas songs
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Comments:
The Christmas song was released by Nat King Cole in 1946. It's the song that made him a popular vocalist.
- pedre, bangor, ME
110 words (give or take) put together in less than an hour. Everyone knows this one ...the songwriters made a good living because of this one song..a Christmas classic..I'd like to write something enduring like this someday...
- rich, elkins, WV
Nat "King" Cole recorded and released four separate and distinctive versions of the song, beginning in 1949, as by the King Cole Trio (Capitol F-90036). The second version came along in 1954 (Capitol F2955).
- Fred, Summit, NE