John Frederick Coots
J. Fred Coots composed the melody for Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, the 1934 song that became one of the biggest sellers in American popular music, along with hundreds of other songs and more than a dozen Broadway scores.
With lyricist Haven Gillespie he sketched the outline of the tune in about ten minutes after hearing the words. The publisher thought it a kids' song, yet after Eddie Cantor sang it on radio that November, sheet-music orders ran into the hundreds of thousands before Christmas. Coots also wrote Love Letters in the Sand and For All We Know, and supplied scores for Broadway shows including Sally, Irene and Mary. The Christmas melody is the work most listeners still know him by, a simple, durable line that keeps inviting new arrangements.
Compositions by John Frederick Coots appear on
Christmas Around the Piano
Tony Gould offers reflective improvised solo-piano versions of familiar Christmas songs and carols. Played without hurry and coloured by personal memory, each tune is treated as living music rather than seasonal decoration alone.
Merry Christmas
Elizabeth Anderson and friends put a fresh twist on Christmas carols: eight tracks packaged as a Christmas card, with a vibrant cover and space for a personal inscription.