Cool Yule is a 1953 Christmas song written by Steve Allen and first recorded by Louis Armstrong.
In the years following its original release, the song has been covered by Roseanna Vitro in 1986 on her album The Time Of My Life: Roseanna Vitro Sings The Songs Of Steve Allen, Bette Midler for her 2006 album Cool Yule and by Brian Setzer on his 2005 album Dig That Crazy Christmas.
American jazz singer, songwriter and Blue Note recording artist Kurt Elling released his version of Cool Yule on the 1997 Blue Note Records Christmas compilation Yule Be Boppin’.
https://youtu.be/xkrKnVKhefw?si=yrdDpY3_r53zSkiJ
Cool Yule composer, Steve Allen, was an American television and radio personality, comedian, musician, composer, writer, and actor.
Both an accomplished pianist and a prolific composer, Allen once estimated that he had written more than 8,500 songs. In 1964 he won that year’s Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition.
An avid writer, Allen published more than 50 books, including novels, children’s books, and books of opinions, including his final book, Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio (2001).
In 1954, Allen achieved national fame as the creator and first host of the long running The Tonight Show, the first ever late night nationwide television talk show.
The Tonight Show is the world’s longest running talk show and the longest-running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States.
After CBS radio gave Allen a weekly prime time show, CBS television believed he could be groomed for national television stardom and gave him his first network show.
The Steve Allen Show premiered at 11 a.m. on Christmas Day, 1950, and was later moved to a thirty-minute, early evening slot. The new show required him to relocate, with his family, from Los Angeles to New York. It ran until 1952, after which CBS tried several different formats to showcase Allen’s talent.
In the first few months of 1953, after leaving CBS, Allen briefly hosted a talent show on ABC called Talent Patrol.
He then created a late night New York based talk and variety television program that debuted in July 1953 on local station WNBT-TV. The following year, on September 27, 1954, the show went on the full NBC network as The Tonight Show. The show ran from 11:15 p.m. to 1 a.m. on the East Coast.
Allen told his nationwide audience that first evening: “This is Tonight, and I can’t think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: This program is going to go on forever. You think you’re tired now. Wait until you see one o’clock roll around!”
It was as host of The Tonight Show that Allen pioneered the “man on the street” comedic interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that went on to become staples of late-