![]() “My parents were not religious at all,” Gabrielle Regney tells WGBH. In 1963, crooner Bing Crosby recorded “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and it became an instant holiday classic, selling more than a million copies the first year. “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was released that fall and sold 250,000 copies in a week. The original deal for the song fell through, but the couple’s producer arranged to have the Harry Simeone Chorale record it. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was first recorded as a single by the Harry Simeone Chorale in 1962, shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The couple tried to sing the song together but couldn’t. Shayne was shopping in a store when the melody came to her. The couple had a string of song-writing hits at the time that were recorded by many popstars, including “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” “Sweet Little Darlin’,” “Goodbye, Cruel World” and “What’s the Use of Crying,” per Douglas Martin in the New York Times in 2002. The lyricist wrote the words and then asked his wife to compose the music. “The little angels were looking at each other and smiling.” “Enroute to my home, I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers,” Regney recalled later. Per Spencer Kornhaber in a 2015 Atlantic article, Regney was inspired to write the first line of the song-“Said the night wind to the little lamb …”-when he witnessed a scene of peace and innocence on the streets of New York City. “Things that I think really much scarred him.” “He had to do some pretty hard things to get himself out of that,” his daughter recalls in the WGBH interview. Regney’s experience of facing death in a horrible conflict left an emotional mark that he would carry with him throughout his life. Born in France, he had been conscripted by the Germans during World War II, but escaped to join the French resistance. Warships from both countries faced each other in a tense standoff.Īmidst this angst, Regney had been asked to compose a song that would be on the flipside of a single record. The United States demanded the removal of the missiles from the Communist island only 90 miles from its shores while the Soviet Union refused to back down. Following the discovery of intercontinental ballistic missile bases in Cuba, the two world powers stood at the brink of nuclear war. Regney’s father wrote the song in October 1962 as the world watched and waited to see what would happen. “The star was meant to be a bomb,” the couple’s daughter Gabrielle Regney told the Curiosity Desk of WGBH FM in a 2019 interview. While the lyric “a star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a kite” conjures a heavenly body that guides the Magi to Bethlehem, it also represents an ICBM soaring across the sky. Wissner in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Written by husband and wife Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” has a two-fold meaning, reports Reba A. ![]() However, that sacred sentiment belies the nature of the song’s origins: it was born of the fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The powerful lyrics include the potent message to “Pray for peace, people, everywhere.” One song in particular-“ Do You Hear What I Hear?”-resonates with images of love and hope as it retells the story of the Nativity through the eyes of a little lamb. Most project the sounds of the season, focusing on nostalgic winters and family fun while others echo the religious nature of the holiday. Christmas songs are the standard fare on many radio stations in the days leading up to December 25.
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