The Little Drummer Boy

"The Little Drummer Boy" (originally known as "Carol of the Drum") is a popular Christmas song by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. The song relates how the singer, as a poor young boy, he was summoned by the Magi to the nativity where, without a gift for the infant Jesus. He played his drum remembering "I played my best for Him" and "He smiled at me".

Source: The Little Drummer Boy, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The song was originally titled "Carol of the Drum" and was published by Davis as based upon a traditional Czech carol. The original manuscript is set as a chorale for amateur and girls' choirs, with the tune in the soprano with alto harmony, tenor and bass parts producing the "drum rhythm" and a keyboard accompaniment "for rehearsal only".

The album and the "Carol of the Drum" song were an enormous success from 1958 to 1962. In 1963 the album was reissued under the title The Little Drummer Boy: A Christmas Festival, .

The story depicted in the song is somewhat similar to a 12th century legend retold by Anatole France as Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (French: Our Lady's Juggler), which was adapted into an opera in 1902 by Jules Massenet. In the French legend, however, a juggler juggles before the statue of the Virgin Mary, and the statue, according to which version of the legend one reads, either smiles at him or throws him a rose (or both, as in the 1984 television film, The Juggler of Notre Dame.)

The popularity of the "The Little Drummer Boy" can be seen by the number of cover versions: a total of over 220 versions in seven languages are known, in all kinds of music genres: