The most popular song in the English language undoubtedly was sung to you on your first birthday - and probably thereafter by you to many family members and friends dozens of times a year.
Grown men and women in service clubs sing it to each other every week with gusto.
It was the first song to be sung in outer space - by Apollo IX astronauts on March 8, 1969.
Only the songs "Auld Lang Syne" and "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" are almost as often sung.
By now, you have guessed that the famous ditty is "Happy Birthday To You."
Forerunner of the little song was composed in 1893 by two sisters. Dr. Patty Hill was principal of the Louisville, Kentucky, Experimental Kindergarten. Mildred Hill was a teacher there.
In those days, children began school in the first grade at age 6. There they began the journey through the "three Rs" -- readin', 'riting and 'rithmatic.
The Hill teachers were the vanguard of a theory that children were creative and responsive to learning at a much earlier age than 6. They awakened young minds with structured games, rhyme recitations, coloring, music, dancing and singing.
Patty devised the curricula. Mildred drew on her musical talent as organist for her Old Kentucky Church to provide music for singing and dancing.
One day, Patty wrote a few lyrics for a school song to open the day for their pupils and prepare their minds to concentrate on the coming lessons. She titled it "Good Morning To All." Mildred put the words to music - perhaps inspired by a spiritual refrain.
The greeting was included in a collection titled "Song Stories of the Kindergarten" published in 1893. The book sold modestly but well enough to justify reprinting.
In the first revision, the Good Morning words "to all" became "to you" -- on the premise, I suppose, that teachers had no assigned place or shining face.
"Song Stories" sales increased as the kindergarten idea caught on. The Good Morning song was standard for beginning pupils throughout the country. As a kindergartener in 1926 (yes, I'm that old). I and my classmates sang it every school day - after a cheerful "Good morning, children" from teach.
Schoolroom singing to the teacher has gone out of style. However, I remembered "Good Morning To You" all my life - singing it to my children at breakfast -- and to my grandchildren when they stay overnight with us. They love it:
Good morning to you.
Good morning to you.
We're all in our places,
With bright shining faces.
Oh, what a way
To start a new day.
Mildred died in 1916. Patti became professor of kindergarten education at Columbia University. Their ground-breaking book of kindergarten practices was nearly forgotten.
* * *
Thirty-one years after the first publication of "Song Stories," a man named Robert H. Coleman added a happy-birthday-to-you verse to the good-morning-to-you verse and original music notes. Then, without asking permission of Patti Hill, he published the combination as own -- in sheet-music form.
The birthday verse was so popular, subsequent printings were for it -- and the accompanying musical bars -- only.
Dr. Hill sued Coleman and proved that she owned the melody. She and another sister were awarded substantial damages. A new copyright was issued the following year (1935) and acquired by Birch Tree Group, Ltd.
The copyright was renewed in 1963 and sold along with other assets to Warner Communications in 1988 - for $28 million.
The "Birthday Song" brought in $2 million in its 1996 public accounting report published by Forbes Magazine. Rock singer Michael Jackson recently bought the copyright for $2 million which now is earning "at least" $1 million annually.
Every time "Happy Birthday To You" is sung or played commercially, the Moonwalker gets a cut - until 2010 when the verse copyright renewal expires.
The melody copyright of the Hill sisters passed into public domain long ago. Therefore, anyone has the right freely to write and sing their new words to the old tune.
The song is sung so widely, and often, copyright owners and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers long ago gave up trying to collect royalties from families and service clubs.
Sing away Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions.
* * *
No need to worry at all about performing the other two "most popular" songs.
"Auld Lang Syne" originally was a poem written in 1788 by Scottish poet Robert Burns. It is not known when folks began reciting the poem with accompaniment of an old Highland air known as "The Miller's Wedding."
The words and music were first published together in 1796. Very quickly, "The Good Old Days" became a universal good-night song among British and American sentimentalists.
It is rendered most properly among a circle of friends with their arms over their chests and holding hands with adjacent partners.
"For He's (She's) A Jolly Good Fellow" is another party song popularized by the French originally but adopted and immortalized by the British. Keep in mind that "fellow" is an ancient English word for "companion" or "partners in a joint undertaking" and is not gender conscious.
Etude Magazine says the music construction is medieval French in the time of King Louis XIV. French soldiers used "jolly" as an insult for the English general Marlborough.
As is often the case, an enemy's curse can be turned by the insulted into a term of approval -- "Yankee Doodle Dandy" for example.
Marlborough's soldiers took "jolly good fellow" back home after the war, and there it became a popular tune in the pubs.
About 1830, somebody added a second verse: "We won't go home 'till morning, 'til daylight doest appear." The song, therefore, is properly sung as two verses.
We can speculate about how long it will take for "Roll Out The Barrel" also to take its place closely behind "Happy Birthday To You."
If I know Americans, it won't be long.
November 18,2001
The house
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