Songfacts®:

• Eartha Kitt was a sultry nightclub performer who earned a record deal with RCA in 1953. Trying to play up her image as a sophisticated vamp, RCA had her record a French song called "C'est Si Bon (It's So Good)," which put her on the radar. At the end of 1953, Joan Javits, who was the niece of US Senator Jacob Javits, wrote "Santa Baby" for Kitt with Philip Springer, and it became a holiday hit and Kitt's most famous song. Javits came up with the lyric "Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree, for me," and Springer quickly came up with the music.
• Along with "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," this was one of the first Christmas novelty songs. Christmas songs written at the time tended to be nostalgic looks at the holiday or kid's songs, but this one took a different approach, with Kitt singing about how she's been good all year and expects some very expensive gifts to appear, including a fur coat, a new coat and even a yacht. This girl has expensive taste.
• This song is credited to Joan Javits, Philip Springer and his brother Tony Springer, although Tony had no part in writing the song. In an interview with the digital sheet music supplier Musicnotes, Philip explained that since he and Joan worked for ASCAP publishing, they credited Tony, who was associated with publishing rival BMI, in order to get the song recorded. It worked, but BMI made a mess when they had Javits publish five different versions of the lyrics the following year, which confused people and kept the song from being widely recorded. In 1981, the copyright term expired on the song and Javits sold her share of the rights to Springer, giving him control of the song. For years, he tried to get artists to record it, and in 1987 Madonna recorded it for the charity album A Very Special Christmas. Springer didn't make any money from this version, as he had to donate all his royalties to the Special Olympics, but Madonna's version brought the song back into the spotlight and it has been a Christmas standard ever since, providing significant revenue for Springer.
  
  The song has been used on a number of TV specials and appeared in the movie Driving Miss Daisy. Artists to cover the song include Taylor Swift, Natalie Merchant, Kylie Minogue, The Pussycat Dolls, LeAnn Rimes, Faith Evans and Kellie Pickler.
  
  What about Tony Springer? His cousin David Wexler tells us that he was a lawyer turned painter. He was known as the Village Painter, in reference to the Village in New York City. Tony died in 1995.
• It was only a matter of time before an ad agency used this song in a literal sense; in 2014 a version by Tammy Infusino appeared in a Kmart spot showing five pregnant women dancing to the song in their Joe Boxer pajamas.
• In August 1953, two publishers approached Joan Javits, one of whom was romantically involved with her. They asked if she could write a Christmas song for Eartha Kitt. Joan agreed, but on the condition that her new collaborator, Phil Springer, would compose the music. The publishers agreed, and the commission was set.
  
  "All I knew was that [Eartha Kitt] really didn't have much of a range of notes," Springer recalled to Songwriting magazine. "So I had to watch 'Santa Baby' very carefully, so that I didn't embarrass her by writing notes that she couldn't really sing. So that was the importance of the commission that I wrote the song for. And that made it so simple. It's been easy for anybody to record it with or without the music. It's so simple, 'Santa Baby.'"
  
  He continued: "We wrote the song at 222 East 61st Street, New York City, just two songwriters in my beautiful East Side apartment. We had the title. That's all. We sat down with the title and I composed a quick tune to fit the title, and that's how it got started. The music was written in less than 10 minutes. I had a broken-down upright piano in my apartment, and that's where it was written. I sold it for $15 about a year after we wrote Santa Baby."
  
  The lyrics, however, took three or four weeks to complete, split between New York City and Westport, Connecticut. They were much more labor-intensive than the music.
• Laufey put a jazzy spin on "Santa Baby" in 2024. The Icelandic singer filmed a music video with Bill Murray as the narrator, guiding viewers through a ballet performance by Isabella Boylston, a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. Boylston and an ensemble of dancers grace the screen with a stunning routine choreographed by Alex Wong. Her version charted worldwide, including at #89 in the US and #35 in the UK in 2024.
  
• Other artists that have covered "Santa Baby" include Madonna, Taylor Swift, Kylie Minogue, Ariana Grande and Gwen Stefani. Kylie Minogue's version reached the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.