The Heatwave Christmas Songs
by R. Rojas
From Schubert’s Winterreise, to Vivaldi’s “Winter” concerto from The
Four Seasons, the winter, the cold, the shivering feeling of frigidness,
can inspire a song to be written, a classical piece to be composed.
When one hears especially "Der Leiermann"
("The Hurdy-Gurdy Man"), one
can just feel the cold even if one is not fluent in German that the song is
sung in, the piercing cool nips our skin.
However, can one feel the cold in the heat?
I was listening to an episode of a Christmas podcast a few
months ago, and one of the hosts was banging his head trying to remember the other
Christmas song written during a heatwave. I think the podcast hosts were
focusing on “The Christmas Song,” but I could be wrong. I’m sure the hosts
could kind of hear me yelling at my radio the answer to their question. Well,
not a radio exactly in these days of music from phones, streaming music, and
wireless speakers, but you know what I mean.
The magic of the “Heatwave Songs” is that they were written
in the same month, the same year, the same city, and by two different pairs of Jewish
songwriters
“The Christmas Song” and “Let it Snow” were both written
during a “heatwave” in July 1945.
“The Christmas Song”
The "Christmas Song" was written by Mel Torme and Robert ("Bob") Wells during a heat wave.(1)
I looked up the highest temperature for Los Angeles in 1945 and it was 97 °F (36 °C for those of you across the pond), which seems a rather tame to us living with global warming. That seems like a cool day in Phoenix, Arizona or in Indio, California in July.
Then again, the air conditioning, if you had it in those days, was very primitive.James Torme, son of Mel Torme, would tell the story of his
father writing “The Christmas Song” during a heatwave in July 1945. From a 2020 National Public Radio story on the song:
According to James, it was on a hot, oppressive summer day in 1945 that his father, Mel, went over the house of one of his writing partners, Bob Wells. 'Wells was nowhere to be seen,' James says, 'But there was a spiral pad at the piano. There were four lines scribbled down on it in pencil.' Those four lines were: 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folks dressed up like Eskimos.' When Bob Wells eventually appeared, he told Mel that he had been trying to do everything to cool down on that hot day. Wells said, 'I thought that maybe if I could just write down a few lines of wintry verse, I could physiologically get an edge over this heat.' Forty-five minutes later, the lyrics of what would be "The Christmas Song" were finished.'
Wook Kim, in the article “Music Yule Laugh, Yule Cry:10 Things You Didn’t Know About Beloved Holiday Songs” placed the song writing
in 1944. Again, this may be more accurate as temperatures reached 101 °F (38°
C) that summer. The peak was in September 1944. That year, the temperature did
not go over 100 °F (37 °C) that entire summer until September.
The summer and the temperature, 1944 or 1945, may be apples and oranges, however, the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.) has Torme being discharged from the U.S. Army in 1946. NNDB has Torme’s time in the service from 1944-45.(2)
I could not confirm that Torme lived in Los Angeles in one of those years, but I do know he was based out of L.A. for most of his post-War career. In Torme’s autobiography, It Wasn't All Velvet: An Autobiography, he states that the song was written in California. However, have not found specifically if it was in Hollywood. I am guessing that the important fact that we are missing is where Robert Wells lived at the time. Wells died in Los Angeles County in 1998 and was buried in Westwood.
Regardless of not knowing where in the Los Angeles area Wells lived, Nat King Cole would make and release the premiere recording of "The Christmas Song" in 1946.
Let it Snow
That same summer (1945), in July, “Let It Snow” was written
by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. Again, it was in response to the same heatwave.
Unlike “The Christmas Song,” “Let it Snow” would be released the same year of
its writing, in November 1945. It was first recorded by Vaughn Monroe.(3)
Both Cahn, Torme, Styne, and Wells came from colder
climates. Torme grew up in the Chicago area, Cahn in New York City. Styne born
in London, England to parents from Ukraine, then part of Russia (yes, it cold there). His family
moved to Chicago when Styne was young (it's cold there too). Wells grew up
in Washington state.
Apparently, great Christmas songs can be written in all climates. If “A Christmas Song” was indeed written in 1945 -- as “Let It
Snow” was, and in the same town, by Jewish songwriters feeling the heat -- what a coincidence. (3)
___________
Notes:
1. On a definition of a heatwave:
"Consequently, a heat wave was defined as a period of at least 48 h during which neither the overnight low nor the daytime high Hi falls below the NWS heat stress thresholds (80° and 105°F, respectively), except at stations for which more than 1% of both the annual high and low Hi observations exceed these thresholds, in which case the 1% values are used as the heat wave thresholds."
Robinson, Peter J (2001). "On the Definition of a Heat Wave". Journal of Applied Meteorology. 40 (4): 762–775. Bibcode:2001JApMe..40..762R. doi:10.1175/1520-0450(2001)040<0762:OTDOAH>2.0.CO;2.
However, note this is from a 2001 journal article abstract. What qualified as a heat wave in 1944 or 45 is superfluous that the songwriters in these two songs thought they were in a heat wave and said their songs were written during that heat wave.
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