Cole's 'The Christmas Song'

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” A familiar opening to one of the season’s most evocative vocals, commonly subtitled “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” or, as it was originally subtitled, “Merry Christmas to You,” a classic Christmas song written in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé. 

 

Released as a 78 rpm single in late 1946, our Christmas songbook wouldn’t be the same without “The Christmas Song” as rendered by Nat King Cole, either on the radio or picked up at a local record shop by someone wanting to kick off the spirit of the holiday.

 

Tormé recalled the song was written during a blistering hot Southern California summer. In an effort to “stay cool by thinking cool,” the most-performed Christmas song was born. “I saw a spiral pad on Wells’ piano with four lines written in pencil,” Tormé recalled. “They started, ‘Chestnuts roasting ... Jack Frost nipping ... Yuletide carols ... Folks dressed up like Eskimos.’ Bob thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics.”

 

Which brings us to Nat “King” Cole. One of the most influential and popular vocalists of the mid 20th century, variously known as King Cole, Nat “King” Cole or just Nat Cole. 

 

Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. At age four, the family moved to Chicago, Ill. Nat learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, an organist in his father’s church.

 

When he was 15, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. With his brother Eddie, they formed an act and recorded two singles in 1936 as Eddie Cole’s Swingsters. They also joined a revival of traveling African-American vaudeville show, the musical “Shuffle Along.”

 

In 1936, “Shuffle Along” abruptly closed in Long Beach, leaving cast member Nat Cole stranded. The next year, he began the King Cole Swingsters, playing a number of local bars, possibly working at the V-Room on Fourth Street, as well as being hired to entertain sailors at the Pike for $90 a week. 

 

Songwriter Johnny Mercer founded Capitol Records in 1942 with financial help from songwriter and film producer Buddy DeSylva and the business acumen of Glenn Wallichs, whose brother Clyde was the owner of legendary record shop, Wallichs Music City, a natural outlet for the label. Cole was part of a package of Capitol label stars who were on hand to open the Music City in Lakewood in 1957. 

 

Of the dozen or so artists signed by Capitol at the outset, the most important was Nat Cole, who stayed with the label for the entirety of his career until his lung cancer death on February 15, 1965 at age 45.

 

Recorded with sparse instrumentation by the King Cole Trio in June 1946, this first version of “The Christmas Song” was not released. Over the objections of Capitol Records, Cole returned to the studio with a small string section, which was the version used, becoming a massive hit on both the pop and R&B charts in 1946. Cole re-recorded the song in 1953, this time with a full orchestra and once again with a stereophonic version with another full orchestra in 1961. That 1961 version is generally regarded as definitive.

 

Then there were the close to 200 covers and remakes. There was the 1947 cover by Bing Crosby, who in 1942 had recorded the well-loved holiday standard, “White Christmas.” Other pop crooners on “The Christmas Song” were Perry Como in 1953 and Frank Sinatra in 1957. Flamboyant entertainer Liberace, who made his “world tour inaugural” at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in February 1947, cut his version of “The Christmas Song” in 1954. 

 

Motown acts like Smokey Robinson & the Miracles in 1963, Stevie Wonder in 1967 and The Jackson 5 in 1970 had versions. There were instrumental jazz versions by the Vince Guaraldi Trio in the 1965 soundtrack album “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and Kenny Burrell in the 1966 album “Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas.” Speaking of soul, James Brown cut the song in 1966.

 

Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass did their thing in 1968, as did John Denver in 1975, the Carpenters in 1978, Diana Ross in 1994, Celine Dion in 1998 and Whitney Houston in 2003. There versions by Mannheim Steamroller featuring Johnny Mathis on vocals in 2007, Bob Dylan in 2009, Justin Bieber, in a duet with Usher in 2011 and Paul McCartney with Diana Krall in 2012.

 

Cole’s “The Christmas Song” sold perpetually well on vinyl, charting in 1960 and 1962. “The Christmas Song” made the new Christmas charts every year between ‘63 and 1970, then again in ‘72, ‘73, ‘82, ‘84 and ‘85.

 

The 1999, “The Christmas Song” was remade by his daughter Natalie Cole singing with the dubbed-in voice of her dad, Nat King Cole, the same way she sang with him in 1991 on her and his #1 “Unforgettable,” decades after his untimely passing in 1965.

 

steve@beachcomber.news