SC native Eartha Kitt was the first to sing 'Santa Baby'

Considering the length of her Christmas list, Eartha Kitt must have been a very good girl in 1953.

That’s the year the sultry siren from South Carolina recorded an enduring holiday classic, the one and only “Santa Baby,” in which she begs Ole St. Nick to deliver her a bounty of presents.

Singing, or purring, in her trademark coquettish voice, Kitt asks for nothing less than a new car, a ring, gifts from Tiffany’s and a deed to a platinum mine.

Also a fur, a new house, blank checks and a yacht.

“Really, that's not a lot,” Kitt sang. “Been an angel all year.”

You could forgive Kitt for wanting a thing or two come the holidays. She grew up dirt poor in the town of North in Orangeburg County, where neighbors and family derided the half-Black, half-White girl as “yalla,” or yellow, accordi