By Kathy Witt
NKyTribune columnist
If you’ve been to Goebel Park in Mainstrasse, the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Devou Park, or on a twisty little road also located within Devou Park, you’ve seen the name of the lyricist behind one of the most famous Christmas songs ever written: James “Haven” Gillespie.
Songwriter Haven Gillespie Lived in Covington off and on until he moved to Hollywood in the 1950s, but he returned often for visits. (Photo by Secondhand Songs)
What you may not know is that Gillespie, who never wanted to write the song and had no formal music training, was born in Covington in 1888, and lived there through the 1930s and 1940s – the period during which his acclaimed song was written. The brick two-story private residence, built in 1909, is located on Montgomery Street in Covington’s Mutter Gottes neighborhood.
And the name of the song? Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
One of nine children born into a family ground down by poverty and hardship, Gillespie began working at age 14 as a printer’s devil (printer’s apprentice). During his printing career he worked as a typesetter at Cincinnati Times Star and Cincinnati Enquirer.
Haven Gillespie lived in this Covington house in the 1930s and 1940s. (Photo by John Witt)
Gillespie was 23 years old when, in 1911, he officially launched his music career with the publication of seven songs. Six years and 16 songs later, The Harbor of Love, became a chartbuster for which Gillespie received a royalty check for $12,000. (By comparison, his printer’s salary was about $1,000 a year.)
With hits including Drifting and Dreaming (Gillespie’s personal favorite), Breezin’ Along With the Breeze, Honey and That Lucky Old Sun, Gillespie became one of the most prolific and popular songwriters of the Tin Pan Alley era that stretched from the 1890s to the 1930s.
Gillespie didn’t write Santa Claus Is Coming to Town in Covington – although he and his wife, Corene, were living at the Montgomery Street home when he penned the song in either 1933 or 1934. (Different sources have claimed both dates.) As the story goes, Gillespie was in New York City, meeting with his publisher, Edgar Bittner, and friend and composer Fred Coots. Bittner asked him to write a children’s Christmas song, but Gillespie didn’t think he could pull it off and was gripped by a fear of failure.
Still, when he and Coots left Bittner’s office, they boarded the subway at 8th Street in Manhattan, grabbing seats at separate ends of the car to wait for inspiration to strike. And strike it did as Gillespie was overcome with memories of Christmases past that included his mother’s oft-repeated holiday admonishment.
The Haven Gillespie historical plaque was missing from Mainstrasse for several years due to a need for repairs and refurbishment, but is back in Goebel Park. (Photo by Kathy Witt)
According to an account by Gillespie’s nephew, William E. First, in his 1998 book, Drifting and Dreaming: The Story of Songwriter Haven Gillespie, Gillespie’s mom would always warn her son: “If you don’t wash behind your ears, Haven, Santa won’t come to see you. You better be good.”
It was Gillespie’s aha moment. By the time he and Coots reached 49th Street, he had scribbled the lyrics for “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” onto an envelope. Two months later, the song debuted on the Eddie Cantor Radio Show’s 1934 Thanksgiving Show. An instant hit, the record sold 25,000 copies a day and went onto earn millions for the lyricist whose family had once been so poor they lived in the basement of a Third Street home in Covington.
Gillespie wrote more than 1,000 songs in his lifetime, and while many where chart toppers, none reached the level of fame that Santa Claus Is Coming to Town achieved. By 1964, when Gillespie’s career was winding down, the song had sold 74 million recordings and 15 million copies of sheet music, as reported in an article in Newsweek Magazine. Dozens of artists have recorded the song, including Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra, Perry Como, Gene Autry, the Four Seasons, the Carpenters and the Jackson Five. Bruce Springsteen and Mariah Carey each had certified gold hits with the song.
Kathy Witt’s copy of William E. First’s book, Drifting and Dreaming: The Story of Songwriter Haven Gillespie (Photo by Kathy Witt)
Additionally, the 1970 animated film, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, voiced by famous Hollywood hoofer Fred Astaire and Andy Hardy star Mickey Rooney, was based on Gillespie’s classic song. That same year, Gillespie was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Five years later, at age 87, the songwriter who had given the world one of its most beloved holiday tunes died in Las Vegas.
Learn more about the story of Haven Gillespie in Kathy Witt’s book, Secret Cincinnati: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful & Obscure. Watch Behringer-Crawford’s Curator’s Chat video about the songwriter.
Secret NKY is inspired by her books, Cincinnati Scavenger: The Ultimate Search for Cincinnati’s Hidden Treasures (Northern Kentucky’s and Southeast Indiana’s, too!), and Secret Cincinnati: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful & Obscure. Kathy has become a regular columnist for the NKyTribune and is currently writing Perfect Day Kentucky, due in Fall 2023. For more information about Kathy’s books, visit the Secrets & Scavengers Facebook page. Email Kathy at KathyWitt24@gmail.com.
