In the blazing hot July of 1946, Captain Leroy Anderson, late of Military Intelligence at the Pentagon, was stripped to the waist, digging a trench at his Connecticut cottage, trying to locate some disused pipes. A jog-trot rhythm entered his head, suitable for horses’ hooves and sleigh bells. Once back inside, he sketched out some ideas, subsequently developed and polished over the course of a year. The end product was Sleigh Ride, an orchestral piece lasting under three minutes, premiered by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra in May 1948.
This winter bonbon had no specific Christmas associations, but they gathered around it anyway as the piece speedily grew in popularity. The fame of was further boosted after its first recording in 1949 and the emergence in 1950 of a vocal version, with lyrics by Mitchell Parish that equally didn’t specify Christmas. By 2004, research had unearthed 214 recordings, a number that can only have ballooned