Songfacts®:

• This was written and produced by Ross Bagdasarian (a.k.a. David Seville). The inspiration came to him from his youngest son, Adam, who had a habit of asking in September if it was Christmas yet. He figured if his son was already asking about the holiday so early, other kids probably were too.
• The song went through three versions before Bagdasarian's family gave it the OK. The first version was an instrumental, the third was titled "In A Village Park," and the third and winner was "The Chipmunk Song." Bagdasarian came up with the idea for a trio of singing chipmunks after seeing one of those creatures on the road, refusing to move for his car.
• "The Chipmunk Song" was the first Christmas song to hit #1 in America. It hit the top spot on December 22, 1958 and stayed for four weeks, sticking around long after the Christmas lights had come down.
  
  It wasn't until 2019 that another Christmas song hit #1: "All I Want For Christmas Is You," a song released in 1994 that became more popular as the years went by.
  
  The third Christmas song to reach the top spot was Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" in 2023. That one was first released in 1958, the same year as "The Chipmunk Song."
• The Chipmunks were called Alvin, Simon and Theodore. They were named after Liberty Records president Al Bennett, owner Si Warnoker and the engineer on duty when it was recorded, Ted Keep.
• This was the first Chipmunks single, although David Seville had previously recorded two singles using his pitched-up voice technique. The first was "Witch Doctor," which went to #1 US in April 1958. On that song, the chirpy voice represented the witch doctor, not a rodent. When Seville expanded the act he came up with the Chipmunks concept, creating three distinct characters, each with their own voices. "The Chipmunk Song" was their first single, and it set the stage for Chipmunk domination, which would later include TV series and movies.
• The Chipmunks were very popular for the next few years; "Alvin's Harmonica" went to #3 in 1959, and the rodents got their on cartoon series - The Alvin Show - which ran from 1961-1962. They had some success with a 1964 album of Beatles covers, but by the end of the decade, it seemed that fad had passed.
  
  Seville died of a heart attack in 1972, and in 1979, his son Ross Bagdasarian Jr. assumed control of The Chipmunks, doing the voices of David Seville, Alvin, and Simon, while Ross Jr's wife Janice Klarman did the voice for Theodore. In 1983, they got another TV series, Alvin and the Chipmunks, which ran until 1990. In the '00s, there was another Chipmunk resurgence, with a series of movies and some novelty cover songs that placed on the Hot 100 (their version of "Bad Day" made #67; "Funkytown" went to #86). In 2015 they got yet another TV series, this one called ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks.
• Like many hit Christmas songs, this returned to the charts several times around the holiday season. Here are the chart placings on the Hot 100:
  
  1959, #41
  1960, #45
  1961, #39
  1962, #40
  
  A new version of the song reached #66 in 2007, thanks to the box office success of the film Alvin And The Chipmunks.
• This won three Grammy Awards: Best Comedy Performance, Best Recording For Children, and Best Engineered Record - Non-Classical (this one went to engineer Ted Keep, the namesake for Theodore).
• Within three weeks of being released the song had sold over 2.5 million copies, making it the fastest-selling record of 1958.
• Random trivia: Ross Bagdasarian can be seen playing the piano as a struggling composer in the Alfred Hitchcock movie classic Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Terry - Willmar, MN