By Bernie Brink

Each year, the holidays, the solstice, and the season elicit themes of reflection and nostalgia.  Those themes are certainly reflected in our favorite holiday music: “It’s that time of year when the world falls in love,” which has us “dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know,” and building snowmen to pose as clowns, clergymen, and otherwise spark our childlike imagination.  Some of our favorite holiday tunes have their legacy in jazz, and despite the season’s sense of nostalgia, they come from some unexpected origins.

One such holiday theme is “Snowfall,” which really gained traction as a holiday standard in the 1960s, especially with Tony Bennett’s classic recording.  Penned by pianist and bandleader Claude Thornhill, the title “Snowfall” dates to 1941, but the composition itself goes back even further.  It first existed as a concert piece for Ray Noble and His Orchestra in the 1930s, composed by Thornhill during his tenure as the band’s composer/arranger-in-residence.  Intended as a concerto-like showpiece for Thornhill, it was initially titled “A Fountain in Havana,” and a close listening reveals its allusions to Afro-Cuban music.  Most notably, the arpeggiated bassline hews close to the famed tresillo rhythm that is the foundation of many popular Cuban styles, and what was sometimes known as “the Spanish tinge” (a term coined by jazz progenitor Jelly Roll Morton).  Famously heard on a live broadcast of the Ray Noble Orchestra in 1935, it was revived years later when Claude Thornhill started his own orchestra.  In need of a theme song at one of their first performances in 1940 (common practice for swing and dance bands of the era), the band recalled “A Fountain in Havana,” slowed the tempo to better showcase Thornhill’s impressionistic proclivities, and retitled it “Snowfall.”  In hearing Ray Noble’s 1935 broadcast of “A Fountain in Havana” back-to-back with Claude Thornhill’s 1941 recording of “Snowfall,” you’ll find that they are virtually identical.

One of the season’s most popular tunes was conceived on a hot summer day in July, 1945.  Singer and songwriter Mel Tormé paid a visit to his songwriting partner, Robert Wells, one afternoon at the height of summer.  He noticed a writing pad with a peculiar list on it and asked what it was for.  Wells, lamenting the insufferable heat, explained that it was an experiment to help him cool off, an effort to think of cold, wintry thoughts.  The list included: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, Yuletide carols being sung by the fire, and folks dressed up like Eskimos.  Tormé said, “Bob, I think this could be a song.”  Forty minutes later, they had completed “The Christmas Song,” for which Tormé wrote all of the music and some lyrics.

A more recent contribution to the holiday canon is Vince Guaraldi’s beloved score for A Charlie Brown Christmas, and especially his original, “Christmas Time is Here.”  Like the rest of the music for the television special, Guaraldi conceived it as an instrumental, but tv producer Lee Mendelson (who spearheaded the project) insisted that it needed lyrics.  Late one evening, taking more than ten minutes, he scribbled a few holiday-themed lines on some scrap paper, merely as a sort of proof-of-concept.  Perhaps due to the alarmingly abbreviated production timeline (most of the music was recorded just a few weeks prior to the special’s air date), Mendelson’s “lyrics” remained unedited.  Today, they’re considered a timeless expression of the holiday season.

These are just a few of the surprising stories behind some holiday classics.  They are certainly sentimental favorites, and each year we delight in hearing these standards in their original guise, as well as new inventions on these themes by many jazz greats.  You can hear these favorites and more all through the season on Jazz 93.5.