Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Joseph Spence’s arrangement of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” was recorded during a live performance at the Boston Blues Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts in November of 1972. It was first released in 1980 on the record Living On the Hallelujah Side.

I wanted to record something holiday inspired this year and thought Spence’s unique take on “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” would be a learning experience for me. Though he toured the US in the 60s and 70s little seems to have been documented regarding his technique (it was said he appeared on TV in Nassau in 1978, anybody have this footage???). I transcribed his playing directly from the recording and arranged my own version of this for the video to remove some of the repetition. Though not as hot as his recordings in the late 50s and early 60s, I think this represents a lot of his trademark style and charm. He seemed to only ever play in the key of D and in drop D tuning. He was rather fond of playing out of D in the first position and would often use diminished harmonies when moving the melody up the neck. Something that lends to the bizarre, almost dark sound of Santa Clause Is Comin’ to Town is Spence’s recurring use of an F natural in the bass line, giving off vibes of minor harmony in a piece written in D major.

I’m attaching two transcriptions to this post. One is the transcription of Spence’s 1972 performance. His playing here wasn’t perfect, the 5th string is very out of tune and there are many flubbed lines. It was difficult to fill in the blanks in these instances. Rather than do too much guessing I wrote down exactly what I heard. I then created a second transcription that adhered to a more traditional form for “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” this meant removing a few of the repeated sections. I also cleaned up some of the lines so they represented what I believed he may have intended to play and added some consistency in the presentation. This abridged transcription corresponds to my performance on YouTube, minus one or two notes that I missed (Spence’s cool chromatic movement on beat 4 of m 97 is one example). This will be the easiest to play out of everything I’ve put on Patreon so far, and is a good one to play for the family or as an encore for a holiday gig. The greatest challenge will be the few spots where Spence uses some trademark Bahamian syncopation, though for an artist that is so closely associated with syncopated lines, they are rare in this piece.  

My performance of the transcription:
https://youtu.be/80YprAtdv-4

Andy