‘Santa Baby’ composer Phil Springer, 91, still can’t figure out why his sexy Christmas song endures
BY RANDALL ROBERTS DEC. 22, 2017 3:15 AM PT Phil Springer maneuvers his knobby but agile fingers across the keys of the upright piano in his daughter’s living room and croons the opening lines of the Christmas song so sexy that when Eartha Kitt recorded it for the first time in 1953 it was banned in parts of the South:
Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree / for me / Been an awful good girl / Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.
At 91, his voice might not purr like Kitt’s did — it’s more an affectionate bark — but Springer, who co-wrote the familiar tune, makes up for it in glee.
He wasn’t always so happy with the song. When Springer and his frequent collaborator Joan Javits finished writing “Santa Baby,” he delivered the music to the publishers with an apology: “I said, ‘Gentlemen, this is not really the kind of music that I like to write. I hope it's OK. It’s the best I could do.’”
Certainly, its coyly crass message and the way it so blithely revels in the season’s greediness set it apart from the usual Christmas standards. But the publishers loved it. So did Kitt, whose recording of the song was a huge hit.
Since then, “Santa Baby” has been covered by Madonna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Faith Evans, LeAnn Rimes, Ashanti, Kylie Minogue, the Pussycat Dolls, even Michael Bublé. Earlier this month, Gwen Stefani performed it on her NBC Christmas special.
Yet the precise reason for the song’s success eludes Springer.
“I ask myself, ‘How come? I've written so many songs that, to me, musically are much better than ‘Santa Baby,’ and they're not popular,” Springer says on a recent afternoon at his daughter's Pacific Palisades home. “The answer has to be that ‘Santa Baby’ has a magic that goes beyond a composer's plans.”
