The Christmas tune that started the modern, secular Christmas tradition was “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” It was written in 1934 by composer John Frederick Coots and lyricist Haven Gillespie. Coots was a pianist who played in clubs and later became a composer well-known in Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville circles and for Broadway, film, and radio. He hit the big time on Broadway in 1922 with the musical “Sally, Irene, and Mary,” which was very successful in New York and across the country. He also wrote “A Precious Thing Called Love” for the 1929 film “Shopworn Angel,” and wrote “You Go To My Head,” which became a jazz standard that was recorded by a host of jazz musicians, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker.
“Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” his most famous song, was thus written by a Broadway composer during a time when popular music consisted of swing bands and singers who regularly performed music from the popular musicals of the time. From that perspective, we can see that “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” is essentially a Broadway song in 32-bar AABA form, albeit without an accompanying theatrical component. (Strangely, the 32-bar AABA has long since disappeared from popular music, where the “Verse-Chorus” song form dominates the genre.) That was remedied in 1970, some 36 years later, when the Rankin/Bass show of the same name fleshed out the song’s lyrics and created a one-hour, stop-motion Christmas special that provides a complete narrative that is far beyond anything implied by the lyrics—the story focusses on Santa’s (aka “Kris Kingle,” voiced by Mickey Rooney) “backstory” as told by a mailman, voiced by Fred Astaire no less, and a host of other new characters including single Santa’s wife-to-be, “Jessica.”
A few years later, in 1949, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the tune that was destined to become a franchise-founding juggernaut, arrived as a song based on the wildly successful children’s story by Robert L. May that began as part of a Christmas marketing campaign for Montgomery Ward. By 1946, there were over six million copies of the book in the hands of children nationwide. In an odd but serendipitous happenstance, May’s brother-in-law was the successful composer/songwriter Johnny Marks. Mays asked him to write a song based on his book, to which Marks agreed, and in 1949, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was premiered by Gene Autrey and was a double platinum hit record in its first year alone.
Marks was a highly trained composer who studied music composition at Columbia and the prestigious École Normale de Musique de Paris in France. He was primarily a songwriter who wrote music for Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, The Ink Spots and Sammy Kaye. However, it was his Christmas music that cemented his lasting legacy as a songwriter. He wrote Brenda Lee’s smash hit “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Silver and Gold,” and many others from the many Rankin/Bass Christmas specials that followed “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Like “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a 32-bar AABA form. Like many other Christmas songs, these songs are regularly covered by top-tier jazz musicians like Ella Fitzgerald, who featured both tunes on her first Christmas album, Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (Verve, 1960).
These tunes are not, however, limited to light jazz renditions like Fitzgerald’s and the countless vocalists who covered these and other Christmas tunes—even jazz luminaries like Bill Evans and Wynton Marsalis found them to be worthy vehicles for instrumental explorations.
In the case of Coots’ tune rewritten with Christmas lyrics, I submit that it would be indistinguishable, in terms of its mood and overall character, from other Christmas songs. (This version even has a bluesy intro that would be right at home in the campy cabaret tune, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” from the 1966 cartoon based on Dr. Seuss’ children’s book from 1957, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.)
Now let us reverse that “thought experiment” with Mel Torme‘s “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” which was written in 1945 and became a big hit for Nat King Cole the following year. Try to imagine the piece with different lyrics—perhaps something to do with “newfound love” or something similar. As before, this could easily be a solo aria or a so-called “I Want/I Wish” song from a musical by Lerner and Lowe or Rodgers and Hart.
Moreover, the Broadway connection runs deep. Along with Coots, we find many other Broadway composers involved in writing popular and enduring Christmas music, including:
- Hugh Martin, who wrote “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1944), was a Broadway composer of high renown. He worked on “The Boys from Syracuse (1938), “Best Foot Forward” (1941), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), and others.
- Albert Hague, who wrote “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” (1966), was a classically trained composer who was successful on Broadway and in Hollywood. His notable Broadway work includes “Redhead” (1959), and “Plain and Fancy” (1955), which features the jazz standard “Young and Foolish.”
- Jule Styne, who wrote “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” (1945), was another Broadway composer who collaborated with Hugh Martin on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), “Gypsy” (1959), and “Funny Girl.” The song “People,” from “Funny Girl,” was a big hit for Barbara Streisand, and was also covered by jazz pianist Bill Evans.
- Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas,” which was a big hit for Bing Crosby and was featured in the film/musical “Holiday Inn” (1942). Berlin also wrote some of the most famous musicals of the time, like “Annie Get Your Gun” (1946), “Miss Liberty” (1949) and “Call Me Madam” (1950).
What is it about Broadway songs that make them so perfect for secular Christmas music? First, they were written by genius songwriters whose ability to marry lyrics with melodies and supporting harmonies was unsurpassed. Many were classically trained composers who drew unabashedly from the Romantic Era (1820-1900), including composers like Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. From those composers, they learned how to effectively move through distant key areas, which provides colorful “patches” that are surprising and delightful. They also brought rich harmonies, full of chromaticism, into the Broadway songs and coupled them with soaring lyricism in the melodies. They used the major 7th chord as a stable tonic harmony, which is not found in classical music. (This was done simultaneously in the Blues, as those musicians casually used the dominant 7th chord as a stable tonic as well! See my article on “Harmonic Convergence in Jazz and Classical Music, Part 1: The Blues” for details.)
Today, we are entirely accustomed to a major 7th chord as a stable tonic, but we must nonetheless acknowledge the fact that the major 7th is a strong dissonance that occurs between the root of the tonic chord and the 7th. Ending a piece on a major 7th chord is not as “complete” as ending it on a major triad. There is, in fact, an element of it being unresolved that brings with it a heightened sense of romanticism, sentimentalism, and yearning for closure that does not arrive, yet is comforting nonetheless. It has the whiff of melancholy, which conjures feelings of nostalgia, intensifying the romanticism and making it more poignant and tender. The example below plays all three in succession—a major triad, a major 7th, and finally, a major 7th chord.
In some very real way, these tunes are never “finished”—they do, obviously, have a temporal end. However, the dissonance in the major 7th tonic makes it somewhat of a restless spirit that haunts and teases us with a partial resolution that never fully arrives. This phenomenon provides this music with a “harmonic romanticism” that exists at the subconscious level and gives it, along with the more visible elements in the melodies and key changes, the power to enchant and enthrall in a way that music that ends with triads cannot.
The Broadway composers accessed the richness of the harmonies but did so by combining them with the popular song aesthetics of the time. This meant, more or less, “plugging” them into a set of song templates, of which the 32-bar AABA was one of the most successful and popular. The ubiquitous 32-bar AABA, in comparison to the forms of some of the classical songs, which were more complex, provided a simple form that allowed for almost instantaneous familiarity, owing to the repeated A section, the refreshing movement away from the home key in the B section, and the gratifying return “back home” to the A section.
In Broadway songs, all of these elements combined to create powerfully emotional, sentimental, whimsical and even humorous music that defined the genre in its “golden age.” This is why the Broadway song aesthetic is such a good fit for secular Christmas music, which needs to convey the same thing, namely strong romantic, emotional content, while also being tinged with an air of tender sadness, longing, and nostalgia.
Jazz in Christmas music reached its apogee with the soundtrack to the animated Peanuts Christmas Special, A Charlie Brown Christmas by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. His recording A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965) features jazz-inflected versions of classic Christmas music like “O Tannenbaum,” Felix Mendelssohn’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and Guaraldi’s version of what by then had become a new, secular Christmas classic, Mel Torme’s “A Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” The recording also contains five original tunes by Guaraldi: “My Little Drum,” “Linus and Lucy,” “Christmas Time Is Here” (instrumental version and vocal version, the latter with lyrics written by Lee Mendelson, producer of some of the franchise’s shows), “Skating,” and “Christmas Is Coming.”
Since “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired in 1965, Guaraldi’s music has become a staple of the holiday soundtrack. The music has found a home deep in the culture, far surpassing the animated show’s cultural impact. As such, the music has an inextricable association with the Christmas season—in particular, “Christmas Time Is Here” has long since been elevated to the status of a bona fide Christmas classic.
All of his tunes are jazz gems —they feature rich, impressionistic harmonies, nuanced touch, and overall impeccable pianism from Guaraldi’s Bill Evans-inspired aesthetic sensibilities, light-hearted but swinging trio interplay with bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli, and a smattering of improvisation to mark it, indelibly, as jazz. That said, it was written to support the television special, and it is an accompaniment that knows its place. It is not the center of attention, and, as such, its range of expression, as jazz, is tempered and confined to its purpose.
The soundtrack was wildly successful, selling over four million copies by the early 1970s, making it one of the most popular jazz recordings of all time. It is a bit curious, though—a children’s cartoon with a jazz soundtrack is not something one would expect to work well, but with Guaraldi’s masterful songwriting and arranging, it was the perfect and genuinely indispensable musical counterpart to the show. The Peanuts show itself is, strangely, simultaneously both celebratory and melancholic, even perhaps maudlin at times. Yet Guaraldi, with remarkable artistry and sensitivity, deftly weaves the joy, pensiveness, nostalgia, and childlike innocence together into an evocative, reflective and unified whole that perfectly supports and enhances the story—indeed, one can not imagine the show without Guaraldi’s jazz soundtrack.
Let us run our thought experiment again on Guaraldi’s music—could “Christmas Time is Here” be turned into a Broadway ballad by changing the lyrics? Absolutely. It has all the hallmarks of a great Broadway tear-jerker—memorable melody, rich harmony, 32-bar AABA form with a surprising key change to a distant key (♭VI) in the B section, and overt chromaticism that tugs at the heartstrings. All of those things combine to make a great Christmas song and a great Broadway tune.
Jazz is also inextricably linked to Broadway—jazz musicians since the 1930s-40s have performed covers of so many Broadway songs that they are now known as “jazz standards,” long after anyone remembers which musical they are from in the first place. Jazz drew songs from Broadway for the same reasons as the composers of Christmas songs did—the melodies are great, the harmonies are functional and can easily withstand the addition of upper extensions like 9ths, ♭9ths, ♯9ths, ♯11ths, 13ths, and ♭13ths. These harmonies are sophisticated and rich enough to provide maximum potential for improvisational variations. Finally, the forms are cyclic and easily memorized. (In addition, at the time, at least, the general public knew a lot of the Broadway tunes, so when jazz musicians covered them, people could follow along and enjoy the variation. That is no longer the case today, although some artists, like The Bad Plus and Brad Mehldau, have found considerable success playing pop music covers from the 1960s onward.)
The relationship between the secular Christmas music that emerged in the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and jazz is that both drew heavily from the same source—the Broadway songbook—for the same aesthetic reasons. Their roots are in the same genre; thus, they share some of the same musical “DNA.” As they became recognizable styles, these two genres evolved with similar characteristics that inextricably link them together as part of the Broadway family tree.