Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town

Haven Gillespie wrote the words and J. Fred Coots the music in 1934; when Gillespie brought him the lyric, Coots is said to have sketched the melody in about ten minutes. Their publisher, Leo Feist, liked it but thought it “a kids’ song” and expected little. The first record was made in New York on October 24, 1934, by the banjo player Harry Reser and His Orchestra, with Tom Stacks singing (Decca 264), and when Eddie Cantor sang it on his radio show that November it became an instant hit, selling half a million copies of sheet music in a day. It was the biggest success of either writer’s career. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded it for Decca in September 1943, backed with “Jingle Bells”; Rankin/Bass built an hour-long animated special on it in 1970, narrated by Fred Astaire; and Bruce Springsteen’s live version, recorded December 12, 1975, became a radio perennial.