[78-L] Happy Birthday to You
Taylor Bowie
bowiebks at isomedia.com
Sat Dec 12 11:53:59 PST 2009
Cary, I've wondered if the thing was really intended for juke box play,
perhaps in more rural areas...so they backed it with a more pop-ish Western
swing side.
I bought it BECAUSE of the Happy Birthday...and the other side was just a
nice bonus for me.
Thanks for sending your article as well... a strange story which still has
no ending.
Taylor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cary Ginell" <soundthink at live.com>
To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Happy Birthday to You
I have this disc. I only got it because the other side is by The Wanderers,
a Dallas-based western swing band. The Nichols side is odd - features the
venerable birthday song sung and performed in a variety of different styles.
It's my belief that it was the earliest recording of "Happy Birthday to
You." A lawsuit surrounding the copyright of the lyrics was settled around
that time, establish the Hill Sisters (Patty & Mildred) as the authors of
the lyrics, although this is a huge sticking point with certain researchers.
Here's an article I wrote on the song a few years ago for a copyright
clearance newsletter.
P.D. or Not P.D.? That is the Question
The Happy Birthday Controversy
By Cary
Ginell
Have you
ever wondered why you never hear the song Happy Birthday to You sung in
restaurants when they bring out the free dessert with the little candle in
it?
The reason you don’t hear it is that many restaurants do not have a public
performance license to cover copyrighted compositions.
Copyrighted compositions? Happy
Birthday To You? The simple tune is easily the best-known song in the
English-speaking world, sung to everyone from infants celebrating their
first
birthday to centenarians; from paupers to presidents. But many people do not
realize that the venerable birthday song is under copyright, and earns
millions
of dollars a year for its current publisher, Warner Chappell Music
Corporation,
which is owned by Time Warner. However, the song has a tangled history that
has resulted in its present copyright status, a status that is now being
challenged by a number of musicologists, researchers, and attorneys.
The song’s roots go back to two sisters from Kentucky, Mildred
J. and
Patty Smith Hill. Patty (1868-1946) was a nursery school and kindergarten
teacher while her sister Mildred (1859-1916) also started out as a teacher
but
changed professions to become a composer, organist, concert pianist, and a
musical scholar specializing in African-American spirituals. In 1893,
Mildred
and Patty wrote a simple song that was to be used by teachers to greet their
students each day. Entitled Good Morning to All, the lyrics went:
Good
morning to you,
Good
morning to you,
Good
morning, dear children,
Good
morning to all.
The song was first published in the
songbook Song Stories for the Kindergarten in 1893 with the first of
several revised editions published in 1896. The copyright was renewed in
1921.
In the ensuing decades, the now familiar “happy birthday” lyrics were added
to
the Good Morning to All melody, although the identity of the originator
of the words is unknown. The new words became so popular that they finally
replaced the original lyrics and the Hills’ composition became a birthday
celebration song.
By the early 1930s, the song, now
known as Happy Birthday to You, was being used as Western
Union’s first singing telegram, and it also appeared in the 1931
Broadway musical The Band Wagon and Irving Berlin’s As Thousands
Cheer in 1933. This prompted a
lawsuit by a third Hill sister, Jessica Hill, administering on behalf of her
sister Patty (Mildred had died in 1916). By demonstrating that the melodies
to
the Hills’ Good Morning to All and Happy Birthday to You were
identical, Jessica was able to secure a copyright for the birthday lyrics
for
the family. Thus, Happy Birthday to You was copyrighted in 1935 by the
Chicago-based Clayton F. Summy Publishing Company. Under the 1909 Copyright
Act, the original melody went into the public domain in 1969 but the lyrics
were renewed in 1963, 28 years after their initial copyright. The Copyright
Act
of 1976 extended the copyright an additional 19 years until 2010 and another
20
years was tacked on due to the Sonny Bono-sponsored Copyright Term Extension
Act of 1998. In the 1930s, the Clayton Summy Company was purchased by a New
York accountant
named John F. Sengstack who renamed it Birch Tree Ltd. in the 1970s. In
1998,
Warner Chappell purchased Birch Tree, whose holdings included Happy Birthday
to You, for $25 million. Warner Chappell currently reaps an estimated $2
million in royalties annually from the song. So according to Warner
Chappell,
they own the lyrics to Happy Birthday to You until the year 2030.
Or do they?
On March 4, 1924, one Robert H.
Coleman published a collection of songs entitled Harvest Hymns that
included the song Good Morning to You, which featured the Happy
Birthday to You lyrics in the second stanza. The melody was identical to
the one the Hills wrote in 1893, however, there is no credit listed for
either
the words or the music, nor is there any copyright notice listed (Recently,
a
version of the song published in 1915 has come to light with similar
details.).
It is the contention of some researchers, most
notably one Bob Katzmarek of Katzmarek Publishing, that the 1935 copyright
for Happy
Birthday to You is invalid (he offers “proof” of this for a $35.00 fee.).
Katzmarek’s claim is based on the Coleman collection and a section of the
1909
Copyright Act that states that any song that has been published without a
stated author or copyright notice becomes public domain. Since no notice was
included in Coleman’s publication, this renders Jessica Hill’s 1935
copyright
of Happy Birthday to You invalid as an original composition.
Despite this evidence, Warner Chappell continues to
license Happy Birthday to You and threatens litigation if the proper
fees are not paid, asserting that the copyright that they own for the song
is
legal and valid until 2030. To date, no lawsuits challenging either Warner
Chappell’s ownership of the song or the validity of the 1935 copyright have
been filed.
This creates a dilemma for anyone considering using
the song in a commercial venture. Although the melody is without a doubt in
the
public domain, its copyright having expired in 1969, the status of the
lyrics
is still in question. If it is established that Warner Chappell’s copyright
is
invalid, what happens to the millions of dollars Summy, Birch Tree, and
Warner
Chappell received on the song since 1935? Can those who paid for licenses
sue
for recovery? It will take a major court case to find out, but one thing is
for
sure: Warner Chappell will not blow out the candles on their copyright
without
a fight.
> Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:52:07 -0500
> From: dlennick at sympatico.ca
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Happy Birthday to You
>
> Yippee for discographies with title indexes! I've certainly never heard of
> this
> band..Ray Nichols & His Four Towers Orchestra, BB 5921.
>
> dl
>
> Taylor Bowie wrote:
> > Julian's post reminded me of a very cool record I have of Happy
> > Birthday to
> > You on a Buff Bluebird, from 1934 or 35.
> >
> > Can't recall the band but it's either one of the studio groups (Berwick,
> > Peltyn) or some minor group, and they play several choruses of the damn
> > thing in almost every tempo you could think of...waltz, tango, fox
> > trot,
> > march, rumba...great record! Little bit of actual jazz on it, too.
> >
> > Can anyone remind me who the artist is? I'd like to dig it out and play
> > it
> > and am so backwards that I just have my records alphabetical, not on a
> > computer list.
> >
> > Taylor
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Julian Vein" <julianvein at blueyonder.co.uk>
> > To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> > Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 3:07 AM
> > Subject: Re: [78-L] The Christmas Songs
> >
> >
> >> Bud Black wrote:
> >>> In 1947 Dick Todd with Mark Warnow's orchestra and chorus, recorded
> >>> "All
> >>> Around The Christmas Tree," on the Sonora label I remember thinking
> >>> at
> >>> the
> >>> time that this song would become a Christmas classic heard every year.
> >>> Boy,
> >>> was I wrong! The record was played extensively on the radio, but by
> >>> the
> >>> following year it had almost faded into obscurity. All in all.....I
> >>> kinda
> >>> liked it!
> >>>
> >>> Bud
> >> =============
> >> Oddly enough, Warnow's brother Raymond Scott recorded it in 1940. It
> >> didn't make much of an impression on me. It was recorded November 29,
> >> which would have made it tight for good sales before Xmas. The reverse
> >> "Happy Birthday To You", however, could've sold at any time.
> >>
> >> Julian Vein
> >>
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