Things you didn't know about Santa Claus is Comin' To Town! Behind the Christmas Hits

The lyrics to one of the most popular Christmas hits of all came as bittersweet recollections from a lyricist who had just lost his brother.  This is the story of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is one of the early original Christmas hits of the 20th Century.  Written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, the first recording was believed to have been made in October 1934 by a banjoist named Harry Reser. 
 
Eddie Cantor was a popular performer in Vaudeville shows at the age of 15.  Over the next 15 years, he became a star on Broadway and had several hit records.  He was also the host of a daily radio show…and by 1933, he was the highest paid radio star in America AND the top box office draw at the movies.  
 
This was during the depression and Eddie felt strongly that the world needed a bright, upbeat Christmas song to feel good about.  For months, he tried to write one of his own, but nothing clicked.  

This is where Haven Gillespie came in.  A part-time newspaper writer from Covington, Ohio who was also trying to make it as a songwriter. Eddie Cantor started to call around to music publishers looking for unreleased Christmas songs.  Edgar Bittner was a music publisher at Leo Feist Inc. in New York City.  He called Gillespie to his office and pitched him to write something for Cantor.  Gillespie once said Bittner told him he a vocabulary that children could understand – Gillespie didn’t quite know how to take that…so he passed.  But on the subway ride home after the meeting, he had a thought.  He remembered something his mother used to tell him when he was a child.  Not only did Santa know when kids were sleeping – he also knew when they had been bad or good.  He pulled out an envelope from his pocket and began to write down other images he had as a kid – how his mother’s warnings would keep him and his siblings in line.  And that’s when he remembered his mom pointing a finger at his brother, Irwin, and saying “you better watch out…you better be good, because Santa Claus is coming.” Irwin had just died in Kentucky weeks earlier, so the recollection was bittersweet.

For the rest of the ride home, Gillespie would continue to write about his childhood…but he didn’t have a melody…so he turned to his composer friend, J. Fred Coots.  He was the one who noticed the rhythm in what Gillespie was writing and started banging away at the piano.  
 
24 hours later, Gillespie and Coots went back to Edgar Bittner and presented the song, which was immediately sent to Eddie Cantor.  
 
Cantor didn’t love it right away, but his wife did…and that was the stamp of approval it needed. 

Before ever performing it live on his show, Eddie recorded it in the studio so the records were ready to go.  He also worked with the publisher to print and distribute the sheet music to stores to sell, knowing that once the song was out there, people would want to know how to sing & play it themselves. Eddie Cantor was right.  During his live Broadcast from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in November 1934, Eddie performed the song live for the first time.  And within 24 hours of that performance, 30,000 records and 500,000 copies of the sheet music had been sold.

Despite it’s instant success, Gillespie always struggled with the song as it reminded him of his late brother Irwin, who died just before getting the call from Edgar Bittner to write something for Cantor’s show.
 
The song is a classic and in 1970 was turned into an animated TV special.

Countless versions have been recorded, but Bruce Springsteen’s has been the most popular of the modern era.  It was recorded live in 1975, but wasn’t released until Bruce allowed it be included in a Sesame Street compilation album in 1982 called In Harmony.  It didn’t really become popular until the Born in the USA album came out and Bruce made it the b-side of the single My Hometown in 1985. 

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