J. Fred Coots was an American composer and songwriter born John Frederick Coots in Brooklyn, New York, in 1897. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he composed over 700 published songs out of an estimated 3,000 written, along with more than a dozen Broadway shows. His work epitomizes the Tin Pan Alley tradition, crafted for vaudeville, Broadway, radio, and film. Coots is best remembered for "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," written in 1934 with his most frequent lyricist Haven Gillespie, which sold over four million copies of sheet music and became a perennial holiday classic. With Gillespie he also wrote "You Go to My Head," a sophisticated ballad that entered the jazz standard repertoire and is featured on AllSolos. His other well-known songs include "Love Letters in the Sand" with Nick and Charles Kenny, later a major hit for Pat Boone, and "For All We Know," also featured on AllSolos. Additional collaborators included lyricists Benny Davis, Sam M. Lewis, and Charles Tobias. Coots contributed songs to Cotton Club revues and various Broadway productions through the 1920s and 1930s. He died in 1985, leaving a body of work that ranges from enduring jazz standards to one of the most recognizable Christmas songs ever written.
