Although the song wasn’t originally written by them, many versions of the song are known all over the world.
Perhaps best known, is the version of the song by the German / Carribean band Boney M – which was released on their 1981 Christmas album.
The song became a Christmas Carol in the 1960s, when Harry Simeone’s music The Little Drummer Boy became massively popular.
It rose high up and, as with the soprano notes of the original lullaby, Harry’s The Little Drummer Boy became massively popular. It was on the hit parades on both sides of the Atlantic between 1958 and 1962.
That was just the beginning.
Between 1957 and the Christmas of 2011, 113 musicians have recorded the song and often included it in their Christmas records.
This song crossed genres, boundaries and borders from Jimmy Hendrix to Marlene Dietrich – to Johnny Cash and even Bob Dylan.
In fact it was Katherine Kennicott Davis from St Joseph, Missouri, who composed Carol of The Drum in 1941 – which was to get into the hit parade, as The Little Drummer Boy more than ten years later. Harry Simeone Chorale released an altered version of the music as a pop record in 1958, after the famous Trapp Family had sung it a few times.
The story in the song is about a little boy who hasn’t got a present for baby Jesus, but ‘to honour him’ he plays his drums for him: “I played my best for Him!” and for that, he gets Mary’s approval.
Pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum, rum pum pum pum.
