Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

I came in not long ago from shoveling four inches of new snow off the front sidewalk and the driveway. We’re expecting up to seven inches more tonight. Naturally, I thought of the most appropriate piece of music by which to recover from the shoveling and prepare for the next onslaught. What else but Woody Herman’s 1945 recording of “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow,” with one of Herman’s best and—regardless of his disclaimer below—most popular vocals. Correspondingly, the arrangement is one of Neal Hefti’s most brilliant. Quoted in the notes for the Columbia album The Thundering Herds, Herman said,

Neal did a wonderful arrangement of this. It was so good that it ruined our chances of getting a hit record. One reason is that the introduction must run about 198 bars and that’s too much for a pop record. But it was just so good that I couldn’t bear to leave it out. It was a case of letting our musical honesty carry us away. So Vaughan Monroe wound up with the hit record of the song.

Woody is the vocalist. Maybe you won’t mistake him for Vaughan Monroe.