Chapter 1: What special holiday episode is being featured?
Hi, it's Terry Gross back with another Fresh Air Plus bonus episode. Just a quick note before we start. This is a special episode because we're making it available to all of our listeners. Usually these Plus episodes featuring interviews from our archive are just available for our Fresh Air Plus supporters. But in the spirit of the season, we wanted to give everyone a chance to listen.
If you're already a Plus supporter, we want to say thank you. We always appreciate your support. But if you're not yet, we hope you'll consider joining. It's a great way to support public radio and you'll get access to all our weekly bonus episodes, including a Q&A episode I'm doing with our co-host Tanya Mosley next week. So you can sign up now at plus.npr.org slash fresh air.
Again, that's plus.npr.org slash fresh air. Okay, let's get started with today's episode. To celebrate the holidays, we're featuring the composers of two of the best-known and most enduring Christmas songs. We'll go back to 1977, when jazz singer Mel Tormé told me the story behind co-writing the Christmas song, the one that begins, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Then we'll hear from Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine, who co-wrote Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. We'll conclude with something recent from last year, when John Batiste was at the piano, playing and talking with me about his favorite Christmas songs.
So here's the late jazz singer Mel Torme back in 1977, when Fresh Air was still a local program in Philadelphia, talking with me about co-writing the Christmas song with Bob Wells.
One of the songs that you sing is one of your own songs, which is the Christmas song, a song that around this time of year you hear on the radio and you hear just walking along the streets and you hear it on television, you hear it wherever you go.
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.
How did you write it?
Very simple story. Bob Wells and I wrote the Christmas song together. We were songwriting partners. I went out to his house in Toluca Lake, California on virtually one of the hottest July days I can remember in 1945. I went out to work. We worked every day. We wrote every day.
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Chapter 2: How did Mel Tormé co-write 'The Christmas Song'?
But the Nat Cole version, not out of sentimentality, believe me, but out of the pure feeling that he got for the song and what it means to Bob and I, Bob and me, that's still the best record.
Do you have a wing of your house or a jet plane that is a result of the royalties of that song?
Well, not exactly a jet plane, but I could have bought a jet plane with it, because the royalties have, quite candidly, and I say this with tremendous gratitude... been utterly enormous. We both figured out, Bob and I, over the years, because we wrote it well over 30 years ago. I remember we wrote it in 45. It came out in 46, by the way.
We were a little bit too late for, even in July, we were a little bit too late for that Christmas season. So it came out in October of 46. We have each made over a million dollars a piece on that song. That's on the level. And it's staggering. It staggers me when we finally figured out what our royalties had been.
And that, of course, covers records, sheet music, what we call the ASCAP performance ratings on it. It's mind-blowing. It just absolutely kills me.
Did anyone tell you, any publishers or music companies tell you that it would never make it, it would never work?
Oddly enough, that's one piece of music that I've been involved in, Terry, where from the very get-go, from the very left-hand corner, from the top of it, they said, hey, this is going to be a big song. I never dreamed, never dreamed, and neither did Bob, probably neither did Nat Cole, that it would become the monster, that it became, it's the biggest record that Nat Cole ever had.
That includes Nature Boy, that includes anything that Nat ever did. It is the single biggest record he ever had.
That interview with Mel Torme was recorded in November 1977. Torme died in 1999. Next up is an excerpt from my 1989 interview with the songwriting duo Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine. They wrote my favorite Christmas song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. It's just one of the songs they wrote for the classic 1944 Judy Garland musical Meet Me in St.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the lyrics in 'The Christmas Song'?
Yeah, I think it was always pretty commercial.
But I loved it when it was old-fashioned. We didn't even have electric lights on our tree. We'd have candles.
Well, that's considered very dangerous now.
Well, I know it is, but we didn't have any problems. It worked out okay.
We're about to hear a version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas that you recorded a year ago. That's right. And was released earlier this year in a CD that's called Hugh Sings Martin. Right. And this features recordings that you've made, you know, throughout your career, particularly like in the, I guess in the 40s and 50s.
That's right.
But it has this new recording from a year ago. You made this recording when you were 90?
I was 90 years old. I don't know how I got through it.
And you're at the piano playing and singing. It's quite beautiful. Do you want to say anything about making this recording before we hear it?
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Chapter 4: What is the story behind 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'?
Ooh, that transition.
On your knee.
That gives me chills. The angel voice said, Oh, night divine. Yeah, that's blues, see that?
Yay.
Since I've made so many suggestions on what to play, I'd like you to choose the last piece. And whether you want it to be a Christmas song or a Beethoven composition or anything else, whatever mood you feel like playing. Is that too wide open for you?
I'm going to figure it out as I play.
Okay. Okay.
Don't stop dreaming Don't stop believing Cause you know that our time is coming up So let's soak up the day And dance the night away So with all you've got, don't stop I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composed Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah
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