The greatest Christmas song every recorded is The Christmas Song, commonly subtitled Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, sung by Nat King Cole. I am reminded of this every year when my local radio stations switch to their all-Christmas music formats to kick off the holiday season. When they do, I find myself waiting for this musical gem, above all others. It’s my seasonal scene setter and personal kickstarter for the holidays.
Nat King Cole Christmas Song from Mike Warren on Vimeo.
The emotional power of Christmas music
I recognized the emotional tug of Christmas music early on and began collecting holiday tunes when I was just eight years old. Initially they came in the form of full-length vinyl albums and 45s until CDs came along years later, and before those gave way to today’s digital formats.
I’m passionate about Christmas music and creating Christmas playlists for the holiday season as a year-round project. The magic of holiday music can be explained quite simply: it sets the mood for the season while bringing back my most treasured Christmas memories. Today, I have dozens of “best of” holiday playlists featuring new songs, oldies, weird tunes, instrumentals, and classical holiday music all stuffed into my iTunes account. But no matter how many songs I add to my collection, there can only be one number one song and that is Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song.
The greatest Christmas song ever recorded
From the soft piano intro to the soaring strings that welcome Nat’s smooth ode to the holidays, his version of The Christmas Song is perfect in every way. The song itself has a fascinating musical history from the drafting of the lyrics to the recording of the music to its introduction to the public. We’re all familiar with Cole’s rendition of The Christmas Song we hear so often today, but did you know that Cole recorded and released multiple versions from 1946 to 1961? While his melodic voice is instantly recognizable in every version, the songs are remarkably different. Thanks to Cole’s relentless pursuit of perfection, and insistence on bringing in those iconic string instruments, we have the amazing version that we all recognize today as one of our favorite holiday standards.
A Christmas Song is born
Before we get into Cole’s role in this musical backstory, let’s step back in time to Toluca Lake, California during the heat of the summer. It’s 1945. Toluca Lake is a bustling Los Angeles neighborhood whose temperature in the summer can swell to as high as 100 degrees.[1]
It was only months before the end of World War II, when a young songwriter named Mel Tormé drove to the home of his songwriting partner Bob Wells. By way of background, Tormé and Wells were a songwriting duo under contract to the publishing firm of Burke and Van Heusen. They were crafting all sorts of music from movie soundtracks. to pop to jazz. The songwriting team took turns writing each day from either Tormé’s parents’ house in the Hollywood Hills or Well’s home in Toluca Lake. When all was said and done, they would work together for five years before splitting, which produced a multitude of hits and an Oscar nomination for “Country Fair,” a song featured in the movie “So Dear to My Heart.”[2] On this hot summer day in 1945, they had no idea they were about to create one of the biggest hits of all-time with their first foray into the emerging holiday music field.
Before crafting this holiday gem, Tormé had wandered into his writing partner’s house and found the beginning of a song (four lines) written in pencil on a spiral notebook, which lay open on a music board near the piano in Wells’ living room. It was the first four lines to The Christmas Song:
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.
Wells entered the room and saw his partner staring at the lyrics to his new song. He told it was an experiment to see if writing about “winter scenes” on such a hot summer day would cool him down.
“I am so hot today. I jumped in the pool, took a cold shower, and tried everything I could think of to cool off,” Wells told Tormé. “Nothing worked. So I sat down and wrote those first few lines as an experiment to see if thinking about winter would do the job.”
Tormé was immediately taken with the lyrics and insisted that it was the start of a something special and 45 minutes later it was complete: The Christmas Song was born. But that’s only the beginning of the story.[3]
The Christmas Song was originally rejected
Excited by their musical take on the holidays, the writing duo dashed off to Burke and Van Heusen and proudly presented their new tune to their publisher. “No good,” was the response. “The minute that you say ‘they know that Santa’s on his way,’ you make it a one-day song.” The writing pair implored their publisher to let them record it but to no avail.[3] The answer was “no.”[4]
Nat King Cole sings The Christmas Song
Tormé paid a visit to musical star Nat King Cole months later in the spring of 1946 at the Trocadero. Cole was in town using a local recording studio and NBC studios, where he was recording his national television show. The singer listened to it only once before standing up and declaring, “That song is mine! Nobody gets that song except me.” On the strength of Cole’s enthusiasm and willingness to record the song, Tormé’s and Wells’ publisher relented and agreed to buy and release it.[5]
The evolution of The Christmas Song
Before entering WMCA studios in New York on June 14, 1946 to record The Christmas Song, Cole failed to convince Capitol Records to hire an orchestra. This original version, without strings, was recorded by the King Cole Trio but remained unreleased until 1989.[6]
Unsatisfied with the King Cole Trio version, Capitol Records agreed to let Cole hire four violinists and a harp player and record it again. This string-filled version, which was originally envisioned and conceived by Cole, was released in November 1946 and was an immediate sensation on both the pop and R&B charts.
The Christmas Song would become his biggest hit and charted number three overall, where it remained for seven weeks, well past the Christmas season.[7] Popular singers rushed to cover it despite the trend away from releasing multiple versions of the same song.[8] And yet, while incredibly popular, it was not the version that we know and love today.
Why did Nat King Cole record The Christmas Song so may times?
In addition to the first and second versions of the song, Cole recorded new versions in 1953 and 1961. It is the latter version that is so familiar to us today.
Why so many versions of the song? Well, during the original recording in 1946, Cole sang “reindeers” instead of “reindeer” and only discovered his mistake after the recording was released. Mortified, Cole apologized profusely to Tormé and Wells and re-recorded the song later that same year.[9] You can still hear reindeers in the original if you listen closely.
Then in 1953, Cole hit the studio again to record his most famous song with the full backing of an orchestra arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle. And finally, Cole recorded the song for the last time in 1961, the first time in stereo, with a full orchestra conducted by Ralph Carmichael. This final recording is famously known as the definitive version and the one that receives generous airplay on radio stations every holiday season.[10]
A holiday song for the ages
The Christmas Song was elected to the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame and the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has been covered by numerous artists ranging from Tormé himself to Aretha Franklin to Twisted Sister and even Bob Dylan. It was even parodied by the Simpsons TV show in an episode titled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”
While there are a multitude of versions of this classic by artists too numerous to mention, it is Cole’s version that stands alone as the definitive version.
“The Christmas Song, by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays,” said artist Harry Connick, Jr. “I’ve never sung it, because Nat’s version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.”[11]
We’ll let Harry have the last word on that one.
Footnotes
[1] Wikipedia Entry, “Toluca Lake, Los Angeles.”
[2] Wikipedia Entry, “Robert Wells.”
[3] Torme, Mel. “My Singing Teachers,” pages 65-67. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[4] Torme, Mel. “My Singing Teachers,” pages 65-67. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[5] Torme, Mel. “My Singing Teachers,” pages 65-67. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[6] Cole, Maria. “Nat King Cole: An Intimate Biography,” pages 52-53. William Morrow and Company, 1971.
[7] Epstein, Mark Daniel, “Nat King Cole, pages 144-145. Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1999.
[8] Haskins, James & Benson, Kathleen. “Nat King Cole: A Personal and Professional Biography of a Man as Unforgettable as his Music.” Stein and Day, 1984.
[9] Torme, Mel. “My Singing Teachers,” pages 65-67. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[10] Wikipedia Entry, “The Christmas Song.”
[11] Brainy Quote, Harry Connick, Jr.
Chris LaFontaine has been a Christmas enthusiast since opening his first Christmas present and after helping to decorate his first Christmas tree. He created Christmaseveryminute.com for those who want to celebrate Christmas a little longer, a little earlier, or every day. You can contact him at celebratechristmaseveryminute@gmail.com to talk all things Christmas, submit your Christmas-themed photos for publishing consideration or to simply share a Christmas story with website readers.
