Interviewed December 13, 1978
Age 86
Concord Oral History Program
Renee Garrelick, Interviewer.
Click here for audio in .mp3 format
I made my living for years writing music and can remember
exactly how I happened to write "The Little Drummer Boy". It was
in 1941 and I was taking a nap at my house on Lexington Road when
a new tune kept running through my head and it seemed to me to be
worth working on. So I went downstairs and wrote it out. I wrote
it up in order to not forget the tune. I get the tune first
sometimes a few words along with it but only a few. This time I
knew that somewhere there would be a drum. I've known several
French carols with a drum or fife and drum, one called "Pat, Pat,
Pat" and another "Rah Tah Tah". This must have set me going. The
words came very easily. Then I decided I would have it for a
mixed chorus with no accompaniment and the sopranos and altos
would sing the aria and the basses and tenors would do the
drumming.
Drumming, I remembered suddenly Ravel's "Bolero", a big
orchestra piece, do you remember in the '30s, where the drumming
begins very softly and gradually grows loud. The drumming, of
course it's real drums and there's a whole orchestra, so it gets
louder and louder with the same ta, tatata, tum tum, ta, ta, tum
going on and ends with a perfectly stunning noise. Well, I
thought I can't have that kind of climax with just voices so I
thought I'll have to begin very slowly and gradually fill in
notes, the tune will go on just the same speed but the drums will
seem to be getting faster and faster. So I did that, I worked it
out and I rather liked it. It sounded like a folk song.
I thought well, why not? Where from? Well, why not from
Czechoslovakia? Some people think that that's not quite honest
but it's done all the time and accepted. For instance, there's
that "Shepherd's Farewell" which he said was a very ancient tune
with the most complicated, really difficult modulations for the
chorus to sing, and he didn't know anything about ancient melodies. So somebody finally went to him and said "Now look here,
old man, this is a fake. You made this yourself, didn't you?" And
he had to admit that he did. And there were some nice spirituals
twenty years ago that everybody sang. Do you know that one
called, "Jesus, Jesus rest your head, You has got a manger bed"?
You don't remember that one, you're a little too young!
Anyway finally the man who said it was a folk song finally
admitted it was his. Then, of course, there is Elizabeth Barrett
Browning with all her sonnets from the Portuguese and everybody
knows they weren't translations, they were just out of her own
heart.
But my tune started life as "The Carol of the Drum", you may
know it by a different title now but that's the way it started. I
put my name down for the music, this is a little tricky for
copyright reasons but I wanted to make it perfectly copyright
proof. So I put my name down for the music and the words I put
down from a Czech carol. Then I realized I'd need a translator
and so I put down translated by C.R.W. Robertson. People say
"Well, where did you get that name?" Well, I made it up. I had
worked on texts for a schoolbook series and I had done so many
texts that I was finally told, "Now will you please get a few
pseudonyms so it wouldn't look as if you wrote the whole book."
And I was delighted because I didn't want my name all over all
those little verses so I got some pseudonyms. I made up some and
I used names of deceased grandparents and uncles and they are all
registered at ASCAP, which as you know is the agency that
contracts performances on the air and pays composers a percentage.
So there it was, all done and signed and it was published by
Wood in Boston. And it was first recorded by the Von Trapp
Family, you know from "The Sound of Music". That's what they're
famous for but they're much more famous for their most beautiful
acappella singing before and after they came to this country. A
few years later Wood sold the song to Mills, a big New York
publisher, I mean sold his whole business not just the song.
Then eighteen years later in December 1959, a friend called
me up and said "Kay, your carol is on the air, all the time,
everywhere on radio!" I said, "What carol?" She said, "The
Little Drummer Boy". Well I didn't ever write a carol called "The
Little Drummer Boy". So I tuned on a station, any old station,
and there it was, the most beautiful recording I could possibly
have imagined. There were about two words different as I found
out later and a little music, a few notes changed, but I don't
think I noticed it then. And you could hear it somewhere every
five minutes and I must admit, it was very exciting and sort of
disturbing to me. So I telephoned the station and I said, "That's
my carol that you're broadcasting." So they took my name and
number and called back and informed me that that was called "The
Little Drummer Boy". It was an old carol that had just been
discovered and there are about four or five men's names on the
composition and a different publisher, but my name wasn't anywhere
on it.
The next day I telephoned the editor, Mills in New York and
explained what had happened. He hadn't heard but it hit New York
very soon and it was plainly a legal matter and I was glad that
Mills had a lot of lawyers that I could fall back on. So then
began a long legal thing, first they planned a trial, then the
lawyer phoned saying that they were planning to send to
Czechoslovakia to find the tune. And I remember his ferocious
tone when he said "They're bad men!" Well, I figured if they were
bad men they could easily find another bad man in Czechoslovakia
who for a suitable sum could remember learning the tune at his
mother's knee. The lawyer said if it came to trial and I lost
because I couldn't prove that I had written the tune unless I had
witnesses standing around at the time then I'd lose not only "The
Little Drummer Boy" but my "Carol of the Drum". He said we should
settle out of court. The men had spent enormous sums on promotion
and it seemed to me that it was fair for them to get their part,
so it was settled out of court. And that's the end of that part
of the chapter.
Now it goes on in both versions, both owned by Mills. Of
course, the publisher always owns the music, I don't own the
music, he owns it. He's bought it and he pays me royalties on it,
this is very obvious but a lot of people don't understand so I
thought I would throw it in.
Both versions have gone all over Europe, Japan, South Africa,
South America, and it's translated into several languages. I
don't think it's been to China or Russia yet, I haven't heard.
And there are a few postscripts also. I've had letters from
Czechs or people of Czech decent living in this country and they
write and say "That's not a Czech tune, we never heard it." And
one of them said, "I always thought 'The Little Drummer Boy' was
about the Civil War." And they all want an explanation which I'm
willing to give.
Then about a year or so ago, one of the men who was supposed
to have written "The Little Drummer Boy" was presented in a large
illustrated feature article in a Florida paper. He told how he
had written "The Little Drummer Boy" and how I was an old friend
and had helped him. The article was picked up in Boston and other
large cities and people wrote to ask me about it. I sent to
Mills' editor and asked him whether I could write to Mr. Onorati
and sass him a little. "Oh, no," says the editor very calmly, "it
really does us a great deal of good, it stirs up interest."
Now I haven't said anything about the television themes, do
you think I might? Of course, it was very soon made into a
cartoon with the Vienna Choir Boys singing the song now and then
with a great deal going on in the cartoon. I must say I've never
felt happy about the cartoon because it brought in so many ugly
things. It had nothing to do with the spirit or feeling of the
song but it's gone on every year and ASCAP hears it and I get
something for it.
But I think the most fun I had was during the first few years
listening to the various television presentations of it on regular
television shows like the Bob Hope show would just do the whole
thing and they all did it sooner or later. Some of them were very
commonplace, some were quite imaginative and there was one especially beautiful one that I can't even describe. It had sort
of a feeling of the juggler of Notre Dame, you know the little boy
who offers his skill of juggling, which I think must have been in
my mind a little from the beginning too. There was a great cross
and when you looked at the screen, you were looking at it sideways
but with the back towards you so you couldn't see who was on it.
It was huge, it went way up above the screen. And in the distance
down low on the ground the little boy came, I'm not sure that he
was juggling or that he was dancing, but he was offering something
to the figure on the cross. It was very beautiful and imaginative.
About the cartoon that's on television every year, I think I
might add that as I said I was unhappy about that cartoon because
it had so much ugliness in it that had nothing to do with the
spirit of what I had done in the song. So finally I wrote a
little play myself for adults and children with both speech and
singing and using the carol at the end. That made me feel a
little better because it kept the spirit of what I tried to say
and Mills published it and it's been used quite a lot in schools
and churches. It's called "The Drum".