Christmas chestnut is done in a New Orleans street style -- with a little touch of "Iko Iko" thrown
in for good measure. Trumpets carry most of melody and trombone takes over for interlude.
According to William Studwell's The Christmas Carol Reader: "Up on the Housetop" may
well have been the first American song of importance which elaborates on the theme on Santa
Claus. It also is one of the first entirely secular Christmas songs composed in the United
States. Written by little-known Benjamin R. Hanby (1833-1867), sometime in the 1850s or
1860s, and probably in Ohio, this vivacious song could possibly predate the early secular classic,
"Jingle Bells" (1857). The best estimate, though, is that Hanby's song was created in the 1860s.
Listen to a synthesized sound clip starting after the intro.
