Who Wrote "Happy Birthday to You"?
OK songwriters. Imagine this fantastic scenario. In your entire songwriting career, you publish just one song. And that song becomes the most well-known song in the English language! What are the chances of that happening? Futhermore, the "song" in question has no verses and no bridge, and is composed entirely of four lines, two of which are identical while the other two are virtually identical. The whole song contains just seven words! What? Well, had the Lottery been instituted in 1893, Kentucky school-teaching sisters Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill surely should have been playing and winning it. Instead, they were composing and performing a little ditty called "Good Morning to You." Mildred J. Hill, an accomplished pianist, organist and musicologist, came up with the tune for "Good Morning to You." Her sister, a noted and influential educator who later served on the faculty of Columbia University Teachers College for thirty years, wrote these simple lyrics to accompany Mildred's melody:
Good morning to you, The Hill sisters hit the big one! "Good Morning to You" was first published in 1893 in the songbook Song Stories for the Kindergarten. Nobody seems to know precisely when the words "Good Morning to You" were supplanted by "Happy Birthday to You," or who was responsible for the new version, but the revised lyrics started showing up in song books as alternate verses around 1924. According to UnhappyBirthday.com, "Working with the Clayton F. Summy Publishing Company, [sister] Jessica Hill published and copyrighted Happy Birthday in 1935. While the copyright should have expired in 1991, [term of] copyright has been extended repeatedly over the last quarter of the twentieth century and the copyright for Happy Birthday is now not due to expire until at least 2030." In 1998, publishing giant Warner Chappell Music bought the rights to the Summy catalog for a reported $25 million...most of which undoubtedly was for the rights to "Happy Birthday," which to this day earns millions of dollars a year in performance royalties for the publisher and for the Hills' estate. According to Warner/Chappell, "Happy Birthday to You" is the "...all-time official birthday song, it has been sung in countless movies, television programs and commercials. In a recent interview, Jay Morgenstern of the Warner/Chappell Music Group explained: 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY is a very glamorous song and is probably the most well-known song ever written.' The melody was written in 1893 by two school teaching sisters who wrote it as a classroom greeting called 'Good Morning To You.' The birthday lyric was added later. Film footage exists of Marilyn Monroe singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU to President John F. Kennedy on May 19th, 1962 at Madison Square Garden in New York. The song was also occasionally performed in concert (but never on record) by Elvis Presley." You can hear a midi file of the classic Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday Mr. President" performance here.
SIDEBAR: Have you ever been to a restaurant like Bennigan's or Joe's Crab Shack -- corporate chains -- and witnessed one of those annoying (unless it's YOUR birthday!) "Happy Happy Birthday" routines that the restaurant staff has been trained to perform? Why don't they just sing "Happy Birthday to You"? COPYRIGHT LAW. The restaurants would have to pay (and could be sued for not paying) for the commercial use of the copyrighted song.
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