The Christmas Waltz

Description

“The Christmas Waltz” is a Christmas song that was written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for Frank Sinatra, who recorded it in 1954 as the B-side of a new recording of “White Xmas”, in 1957 for his album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, and in 1968 for The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Xmas.

Cahn recalls, “One day during a very hot spell in Los Angeles the phone rang and it was Jule Styne to say, ‘Frank wants a Xmas song.'” Cahn resisted, explaining that any notion of attempting a holiday hit so closely on the heels of Irving Berlin’s hugely successful “White Christmas” was “ridiculous”, but Styne was emphatic. “‘Frank wants a Xmas song.'”

The two met in Styne’s apartment to begin work on the project, and Cahn asked the composer, “‘Hey, Jule, has there ever been a Xmas waltz?’ He said no. I said, ‘Play that waltz of yours.’ He did so,” and Cahn began work on the lyrics of “The Xmas Waltz”, which many other artists have also recorded.

Referring to the line that goes, “And this song of mine, in three-quarter time,” Cahn writes, “You’ll notice there’s an impure rhyme in that lyric, ‘mine’ and ‘time’.” He notes that another of his collaborators, Jimmy Van Heusen, wouldn’t have let him get away with such an imperfection but that Styne wasn’t quite so rigid.

For what would become the B-side of “White Christmas”, Sinatra first recorded “The Christmas Waltz” with a chorus as well as an arrangement by Nelson Riddle on August 23, 1954. On July 16, 1957, Gordon Jenkins took over the arranging, and The Ralph Brewster Singers provided backing vocal on the recording for A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra. And on August 12, 1968, Riddle again provided arrangements, but it was The Jimmy Joyce Singers who lent their voices to the recording for The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas.

There wasn’t a version of the song that reached any of the various charts in Billboard magazine, however, until the 2003 holiday season when Harry Connick, Jr. reached number 26 with it on the Adult Contemporary chart during a two-week stay that began in the issue dated January 3, 2004.