Things you didn't know about Bing Crosby's I'll Be Home For Christmas! Behind the Christmas Hits

This Christmas hit was first recorded on October 4, 1943 by Bing Crosby. It was written by lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent for soldiers who were overseas for the holidays but longing to be home. Or…was it?  

This is the story of I’ll Be Home for Christmas.    

Many songs featured on Behind the Christmas Hits were not immediate hits and took time to grow in popularity. Not this one -  It was released one year after Crosby’s iconic White Christmas came out and was an immediate hit, peaking at #3 on the Billboard charts.  
 
It was also a hit with the men & women of the armed forces. Yank – a magazine for American GI’s – said Bing Crosby and this song accomplished more for military morale than anyone else of that era. While American troops loved the song, over the UK, it was banned by the BBC, thinking that emphasizing the separation of troops from their families would actually lower morale instead of boosting it.  

But who exactly is responsible for the song? That’s been a muddled mystery, as documented by Ace Collins in his book Stories Behind the Greatest Hits of Christmas.

Just before Christmas 1942, three songwriters went for dinner in NYC: Kim Gannon, Walter Kent and Buck Ram. Ram mentioned a song he had written for his mother while away at school almost 20 years earlier. It was called “I’ll Be Home for Christmas (Through Just a Memory).” The dinner ended and the friends went their separate ways, although when he got home, Ram noticed that he didn’t have his copy of the lyrics he showed his friends.  
 
Flash forward to summer 1943 – Kent and Gannon are in a songwriting session together and come up with something called “I’ll Be Home for Christmas (If Only in My Dreams).” Instead of a song about a son missing his mother while away at school, Kent & Gannon wrote a song about a soldier off to war missing his family at home. The song was copyrighted and sent to Bing Crosby, who loved it immediately. In 1943, there was no such thing as keeping a Bing Crosby song on the “down-low” so it wasn’t long at all before Buck Ram learned of it and remembered his missing lyric sheet.  

Lawsuits were filed and things got ugly, but as the court proceedings unfolded, it was determined that the only thing the two songs shared was a title – the lyrics were completely different and conveyed different messages. Ultimately, the court decided that instead of stripping credit from Gannon & Kent, Ram’s name would be added and that royalties would be split three ways.  

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