Now It's The Same Old Song: Sleigh Ride

Sleigh Ride is another very popular song around the holidays that makes no mention of Christmas at all, except in a few cases of altered lyrics where the singer substitutes "Christmas" for "birthday" in reference to the party at Farmer Gray's.

Originally an orchestra piece, Sleigh Ride was written by Leroy Anderson between 1946 and 1948 and first recorded by the Boston Pops in 1949.

Leroy Anderson was an interesting man in possession of a level of intelligence that exceeded the average man and he applied that gift to music and language.
The son of Swedish immigrants, he earned Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degrees at Harvard and also studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was fluent in 9 languages and served in military intelligence during WWII and Korea.

So, the Boston Pops recorded it in 1949 and Anderson issued his own recording of it in 1950. Both recordings sounded nearly the same.
Also in 1950, based on the popularity of the 1949 Pops recording, Mitchell Parish wrote lyrics for it and they were first recorded by The Andrews Sisters. Also recording the song with vocals for Christmas 1950 was later popular TV host Merv Griffin.
Throughout the 50's the song remained popular with both singers and orchestra's. Probably the most well-known recording from that period was done in 1958 by Johnny Mathis. 55 years later it's still often heard on the radio and in stores and restaurants.
Five years later it was recorded by The Ronettes for the previously mentioned Phil Spector-produced LP A Christmas Gift For You. For many years that version was certainly a runner up to the Mathis version in terms of popularity.

It's interesting to note that the bridge of the song (Giddy Up - Giddy Up, etc), as originally composed proved to be very difficult for singers. Mathis had to change the key and tempo and The Ronettes dropped it all together and sang only the verses.

The Boston Pops and Leroy Anderson's original recordings were mechanical affairs and they both re-recorded the song onto 2-channel magnetic tape in 1959. Those are the versions you usually hear today. I had the original red-vinyl Pops 45 rpm record from 1949 until about six years ago. It had a lot of snap, crackle and pop, but I can say it is very difficult to tell the difference between the 4 recordings made by the Pops and Anderson in 1949, 1950 and 1959. The 1959 recordings are much cleaner but they only seem to differ in a slight variation of tempo.

64 years after making its debut, Sleigh Ride remains in the top 10 of performed Christmas songs with the 1959 Leroy Anderson recording still the most popular instrumental version and the 1958 Mathis recording the most popular vocal performance based on data from airplay monitoring services.

Leroy Anderson - Sleigh Ride (1959)

The Andrews Sisters - Sleigh Ride {first vocal} (1950)