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| Do You Hear What I Hear Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne Arranged by Harry Simeone |
As with many of our Christmas musical standards, many people assume that the poignant plea for peace that is “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was composed in Europe years and years ago. Many would be surprised to know that the song was written in 1962 by a classically trained French composer and his would-be rock and roller wife, Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne, while our nation was in the throws of the Vietnam War and on the heels of the terrifying nuclear threat that was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In the 1930s and 1940s, French-born Noel Regney was preparing himself for a career in music. A gifted musician and composer, studying at the Strasbourg Conservatory and at the Conservatoire National de Paris, success appeared to be eminent – that is until his country was overwhelmed by Hitler’s troops. Together with many other young Frenchmen, Regney was forced into the Nazi Army.
Regney loathed the Nazis. While forced to wear the German Army uniform, he became a member of the French underground. A valuable member of the underground, Regney collected information and, whenever possible, warned French resistance fighters of planned Nazi attacks against them. He was assigned by the resistance fighters to a mission that would haunt him throughout his life: Regney was to lead a group of German soldiers into a trap where the French fighters could catch their enemy in a crossfire. A successful mission for the resistance fighters who suffered only minor injuries, the sight of German soldiers falling dead all around him was forever etched in Regney’s mind. He never commented publicly about that terrifying day. Others have said Regney was intentionally wounded by the French to protect him from the Germans in the belief that, if Regney emerged from such a bloody attack with no physical injury, the Germans would certainly have concluded that he had prior knowledge of the attack and that he had participated in setting the trap. Though the physical wounds healed, Noel Regney never forgot the emotional and pyschological horror of that day. It was not long after this encounter that Regney deserted the German army and lived underground with the French for the rest of the war. “Only then did I feel free,” he once observed.
After the war, Regney worked for a number of years as the musical director of the Indochinese Service of Radio France and as the music director at Lido, a popular Paris nightclub. In 1951, he left France to take a world tour as musical director for French singer Lucienne Boyer. He had had, he said in a 1981 interview, “a very romantic love affair with a society lady and it went sour. I liked the idea of going away from the scene of my broken heart.” In 1952, he moved to Manhattan where he made a living composing music for television shows and writing commercial jingles while continuing to work on more serious musical composition. It was in New York’s Beverly Hotel in 1951 that Regney became smitten by the hotel’s piano player, Gloria Shayne. Like Regney’s tv and commercial work, Shayne played piano at the hotel to make ends meet while she pursued greater musical success. She would later achieve that success writing popular songs recorded by well-known singers including “Good-bye Cruel World” by James Darren, “The Men in My Little Girl’s Life” by Mike Douglas, and “Almost There” by Andy Williams. Within weeks of their meeting, Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne married.
In October 1962, together with rising tensions and U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in a crisis centered on Russian missiles installed in Cuba. The United States threatened military action if the missiles were not removed. The world trembled and prayed as these two nuclear powers stood eyeball-to-eyeball.
Undoubtedly, the tension and sense of despair in the air brought to Regney’s mind the horrors he had lived in World War II. The fear of death was not an abstract concept to him. He knew that fear all too well. The world of his youth was torn from him by the occupying Nazis. Now, the safety and security he had built for himself and his family in the United States was also in danger of destruction.
It was at this time, with Christmas approaching, a music producer had asked Noel to write a holiday song.
“I had thought I’d never wirte a Christmas song,” he recalled. “Christmas had become so commercial. But this was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the studio, the producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated.”
“En route to my home, I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other smiling. All of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary.”
The sight of these two precious babies filled Noel’s heart with poetry. The babies brought to mind newborn lambs. The song began, “Said the wind to the little lamb.” As soon as he reached his home, Regney jotted down the lyric that he had mentally composed en route. When he had finished, he gave the poem to his wife, Gloria, asking her to write the music to accompany his words. Though in their usual collaberations Noel wrote the music and Gloria wrote the lyrics, he wanted the song to have the contemporary tone that he knew Gloria could create. Having planned to go shopping that afternoon, she read the poem then set about her errands. Gloria has said, “I was going to Bloomingdale’s when I thought of the first line.” Her daughter, Gabrielle, relays “While waliking down the street in New York, my mother heard trumpets playing the melody in her head.”
It was not until she returned home that Gloria realized she had inserted an extra note in the first line and the music did not fit the lyric. Thinking the melody Gloria had written to be one of the most beautiful he had ever heard, Noel opted to change the lyric. As a result, “Said the wind to the little lamb” became “Said the night wind to the little lamb.” Likewise, Gloria thought that no one in America would relate to the line “a tail as big as a kite” and asked her husband to change the line. On this he did not agree, and the line stayed as originally written. Gloria later conceded that Noel had made the right decision.
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| The Wonderful Songs of Christmas The Harry Simeone Chorale Mercury Records 1963 Catalog #MG20820 (mono) Catalog #SR60820 (stereo) |
The couple took their song to Regent Publishing Co., (owned by brothers of Benny Goodman) where Gloria played the piano while Noel sang. Within minutes, Regency publishers called Harry Simeone who had been looking for a follow-up to his hit, “Little Drummer Boy.” Simeone was hooked and wanted to hear the song right away. This posed a new problem for the couple. Since they took the song immediately to Regency and Regency just as quickly called Simeone, there was no recorded demo. They would have to perform their song for Simeone in person – that day. Because Gloria had a prior commitment to play piano for a commercial recording that day, Noel had to go alone. He feared the live demo would not go well, but could not reschedule. He went alone playing and singing the song for Simeone. Sure that he had botched the demo, Noel was convinced their song would never be recorded. To the surprise of the couple, the Harry Simeone Chorale recorded the song a few days later and released the single around Thanksgiving in time for the 1962 Christmas season.
Gloria, speaking about the song, said, “Noel hadn’t had much success in his classical career, and he wanted to do something meaningful and beautiful. In this song he did. Noel wrote a beautiful song, and I wrote the music. We couldn’t sing it (all the way) through; it broke us up. We cried. Our little song broke us up. You must realize there was a threat of nuclear war at that time.” Newspapers reported that people would hear the song on the radio and pull over to listen to it.
There have been many, many versions recorded of “Do You Hear What Hear” including early versions by Harry Simeone and Perry Como as well as more recent versions by Gladys Knight and the Pips, Destiny’s Child, and Vanessa Williams among other. It was Bing Crosby’s 1963 rendition that made the song a Christmas standard, though it was another singer’s interpretation that was favored by Noel and Gloria. Speaking of their personal favorite, Gloria said, “When Robert Goulet came to the line “Pray for peace people everywhere’ he almost shouted those words out. It was so powerful.”
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| Robert Goulet’s Wonderful World of Christmas Columbia Records 1968. Catalog #CS9734 Columbia Special Products for Sutton Distributors 1976. Catalog #P13345 |
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” carried a beautiful message close to people in all walks of life. It became a popular Christmas carol – “a song high above the trees with a voice as big as the sea.” Unfortunately, the message of peace intended by Noel Regney when he penned the lyrics is lost to many people. Noel once remarked, “I am amazed that people can think they know the song and not know it is a prayer for peace…We are so bombarded by sounds and our attention spans are so short.”
Noel and Gloria divorced in 1973 each remarrying and continuing their respective musical careers. Although their marriage didn’t last, daughter Gabrielle says that her parents remained close friends. Following an operation, Gloria lost her ability to play the piano. Similarly, Noel suffered a stroke and lost the ability to speak.
Noel Regney died just before Christmas, Nov. 25, 2002, in a nursing home having suffered from ill health for some time. Gloria Shayne Baker died March 6, 2008, her death a result of lung cancer.
This blog is written and published by DLF Music Transfer, LLC dba Christmas LPs to CD. For more information on Christmas music or to purchase CDs of classic Christmas records on CD, please visit our website www.christmaslpstocd.com , call us 888-384-6970, or e-mail us david@dlfmusic.com.
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