Jimmy Boyd was born in an old farmhouse in McComb, Mississippi. In 1941 his father, Leslie Boyd, put his wife Winnie and their two sons (Kenneth, 4, and Jimmy, 2), on a train bound for Riverside, California for the second time. The family was sent back to Mississippi a year earlier by the California Welfare Department because Leslie didn't have any skills to get a good job. Having sold everything they owned, and only having enough money for his wife’s ticket and the two boys, Leslie rode the rails. He hitchiked on freight trains to join his family in California, something he had done growing up through the Depression. Hoboing from Mississippi, Louisiana and as far as West Texas, he picked cotton to help support his own family of 21 brothers and sisters.

Leslie's father, (Jimmy's grandfather) was known locally as "Fiddler Bill". He played fiddle at dances and family gatherings through out the region of what was known as J.S. Mississippi in the late 1800's. He reportedly could play the fiddle and do a back flip at the same time. Most of Fiddler Bill's 21 children inherited his musical abilities and all sang together and played musical instruments. Leslie played guitar and harmonica and started Jimmy playing the guitar at four years old.

Leslie had been a farmer when a drought hit and there were no more crops, so he picked cotton. He could pick over 600 pounds of cotton a day himself, and was paid 25 cents. Although there was no cotton in California to pick, this time they were determined to stay. Leslie got a menial job cleaning up construction sites, quickly becoming an accomplished finish carpenter.

Leslie and Winnie occasionally took the children with them to a country and western dance, held in a barn in Colton California, a few miles from Riverside. Jimmy's older brother Kenneth, about 9 years old at the time, went up to the bandstand and told the band leader he should hear his little brother sing and play the guitar. Texas Jim Lewis, the band leader, called little seven year old Jimmy up to the stage. Jimmy sang and played, and the crowd went wild.

After the dance was over, Lewis and the manager of a local radio station approached Jimmy’s parents and asked if he could come sing every Saturday night, and be a part of the hour-long radio show they planned to broadcast from the dance. They offered to pay Jimmy $50 for every show, which was a lot of money for the Boyds, but Jimmy enjoyed performing and would have done it for nothing.

Leslie Boyd had cataracts in both eyes and had to have surgery. Cataract surgery in the 1950s was a serious operation, and it had to be done in Los Angeles.

While in LA, they were told about auditions being held for the Al Jarvis Talent Show on KLAC-TV.

Jimmy auditioned for Jarvis and was such a hit that they put him on the show that night. Jimmy, to his astonishment, won the talent show, and the next day, Jarvis and KLAC were literally deluged in upwards of 20,000 telegrams and telephone calls from viewers.

Al Jarvis had a five-hour talk show every day on KLAC-TV with a few regulars on it, including Betty White, called Hollywood On Television. Jarvis immediately announced that Jimmy would be a regular on the show. Several appearances singing and doing comedy skits with Frank Sinatra on CBS-TV's Frank Sinatra Show soon followed. Then he recorded the song "" for Columbia Records, when he was 12 years and 11 months old.

Even in those days of limited media compared to today, it became a record industry phenomenon selling over two and a half million records in its first weeks release. Jimmy's name became an international household word, he skyrocketed to the status of a major Star.

Columbia Records execs were baffled. They had already presented Jimmy with two gold records. (In the days before the Grammy Award existed, Gold Records were effectively the Grammys, and they were actually real gold).

Jimmy loved and owned horses, so Columbia presented him with a silver mounted saddle. Inscribed in the silver plate on the back of the saddle were the words, "Presented by Columbia Records to Jimmy Boyd commemorating his 3,000,000 record of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus".

The song went to number one on the charts again the following year at Christmas, and went on to sell again and again every Christmas. Today with the internet it sells worldwide to new generations, and has reportedly sold over 60,000,000 records since its initial release.