Released on October 6, 1953, “ Santa Baby” cast Kitt as a coy, go-getting sweetheart who addresses a certain “Santa” on intimate terms, saying she’s been “an awful good girl” and would like to collect her Christmas reward: a Cadillac convertible (light blue), a yacht, Tiffany ornaments for her Christmas tree, and - she forgot to mention - “one little thing / a ring / I don’t mean on the phone.” In a year when Americans flocked to see Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, “Santa Baby” caught the zeitgeist. “I wish he was still alive, because I’d send him a big check.” “I took the song directly to RCA Victor and played it for the musical director, Henri René, and he made that great arrangement that you hear when Eartha Kitt sings,” says Springer. “Once you find a title, you then write a little tune, or the lyric writer writes a line, and you work on the song together.” Using a standard chord progression, Springer crafted a catchy melody within Kitt’s vocal range.
Springer came up with four perfect notes to match the syllables. “People ask me what comes first in songwriting, the music or the lyrics,” he says, “and the answer is neither: the title comes first.” And Javits delivered a beauty: “Santa Baby.” It clicked. So Springer did, but he didn’t have to worry too much. When Springer raised his concerns, the bosses told him, “Just worry about the music.” Christmas songs meant sleigh bells, Yule logs, and a plump, chaste, white-bearded man in a red suit, and Kitt, who would call her memoir Confessions of a Sex Kitten, was not to be confused with Bing Crosby. Eisenhower ’47HON in the White House and the radio in every Studebaker on the parkway yipping with “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window,” Springer and Javits set out for Hit City.Ī few months later, the bosses at RCA Victor told Javits and Springer that they wanted a Christmas number for Eartha Kitt, a sultry twenty-six-year-old entertainer who had sizzled in a sleeveless mini-dress in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1952, and whose recording of the French song “C’est si bon” was riding the charts. So in the spring of 1953, with former Columbia president Dwight D. It was a hit.’ I said, ‘Did you ever write a hit?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You’re gonna tell me that a songwriter who never had a hit is refusing to work with a songwriter who had a hit?’ She said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I said, ‘I’m writing with you.’ And that’s how we started.” “She said, ‘I don’t have time to write with you.’ I said, ‘Do you know my song ‘Teasin’’?’ She said, ‘Of course. “I called her and said, ‘I would like to write songs with you,’” says Springer, in a rich New Yorkese cured with the salt of old Broadway.
Now Springer sought to join forces with Javits. A sly sendup of coquetry, “Teasin’” had reached no. And his 1950 song “Teasin,’” sung by Connie Haines, had lyrics by Richard Adler, later known for The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. He’d written “Heartbroken” with Fred Ebb, who with John Kander ’54GSAS would go on to create the musicals Cabaret and Chicago. Springer had already worked with some of the best lyricists around. It wasn’t a hit, but it had sassy lines like The ladies used to like my lovin’ / And I ain’t forgot a thing / I got some oats need sowin’, out I’m goin’ / Have me a second fling. Javits had penned the words to “Second Fling,” a plucky ditty sung by country crooner Eddy Arnold and released earlier that year. Her name was Joan Javits, and she was a staff writer in the Brill Building, the eleven-story song factory at Broadway and 49th where writers, publishers, producers, and performers churned out material in pursuit of the golden apple - a hit record. In April 1953, the month Judy Garland recorded his song “Heartbroken,” Phil Springer ’50CC, a twenty-seven-year-old composer on the Upper East Side, phoned a lyricist whose work he admired.