Website design By BotEap.comBy far the most popular song in English was sung to you on your first birthday, and you probably sang it to many family and friends dozens of times a year afterward.

Website design By BotEap.comAdult men and women in service clubs sing to each other enthusiastically every week.

Website design By BotEap.comIt was the first song sung in outer space, by the Apollo IX astronauts on March 8, 1969.

Website design By BotEap.comJust the songs “Traditional Scottish Farewell Song” Y “He is an excellent boy” they are sung almost as often.

Website design By BotEap.comBy now, you may have guessed that the famous song is “Happy Birthday to you.”

Website design By BotEap.comPrecursor of the little song was composed in 1893 by two sisters. Dr. Patty Hill was the director of the Louisville, Kentucky Experimental Kindergarten. Mildred Hill was a teacher there.

Website design By BotEap.comIn those days, children started school in the first grade at age 6. There they began the journey through the “three Rs”: reading, reading and rhythms.

Website design By BotEap.comHill’s teachers were at the forefront of a theory that children were creative and receptive to learning at a much younger age than 6 years old. They awakened the minds of young people with structured games, rhyming recitations, coloring, music, dancing and singing.

Website design By BotEap.comPatty designed the curriculum. Mildred drew on her musical talents as an organist for her Old Kentucky Church to provide music for singing and dancing.

Website design By BotEap.comOne day, Patty wrote some lyrics for a school song to open the day for her students and prepare their minds to focus on the next lessons. She titled it “Good morning to everybody.” Mildred put music to the lyrics, perhaps inspired by a spiritual chorus.

Website design By BotEap.comThe greeting was included in a collection titled “Kindergarten Song Tales” published in 1893. The book sold modestly but well enough to warrant reprint.

Website design By BotEap.comIn the first revision, the words of Good morning “to all” became “for you”, with the premise, I suppose, that the teachers did not have an assigned place or a bright face.

Website design By BotEap.com“Song stories” sales soared as the kindergarten idea caught on. The Good Morning song was standard for beginning students across the country. As a kindergarten student in 1926 (yes, I am that old). My classmates and I sang it every school day, after a joyous “Good morning, kids” from class.

Website design By BotEap.comSinging in the classroom for the teacher is out of fashion. However, I remembered “Good morning to you” all my life, singing it to my children at breakfast, and to my grandchildren when they spend the night with us. They love:

Website design By BotEap.comGood morning to you.

Website design By BotEap.comGood morning to you.

Website design By BotEap.comWe are all in our places

Website design By BotEap.comWith glowing faces.

Website design By BotEap.comOh what a way

Website design By BotEap.comTo start a new day.

Website design By BotEap.comMildred died in 1916. Patti became a professor of preschool education at Columbia University. His groundbreaking kindergarten practice book was almost forgotten.

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Website design By BotEap.comThirty-one years after the first publication of “Song stories”, a man named Robert H. Coleman added a happy birthday verse to the good morning to you verse and the original musical notes. Then, without asking Patti Hill’s permission, he published the combination as his own, in sheet music form.

Website design By BotEap.comThe birthday verse was so popular that subsequent prints were for him alone, and the accompanying musical bars, alone.

Website design By BotEap.comDr. Hill sued Coleman and proved that she owned the tune. She and another sister received substantial damage. A new copyright was issued the following year (1935) and acquired by Birch Tree Group, Ltd.

Website design By BotEap.comThe copyrights were renewed in 1963 and sold along with other assets to Warner Communications in 1988, for $ 28 million.

Website design By BotEap.comTea “Birthday song” raised $ 2 million in its 1996 public accounting report published by Forbes magazine. Rock singer Michael Jackson recently bought the copyright for $ 2 million, which is now making “at least” $ 1 million a year.

Website design By BotEap.comEvery time “Happy Birthday to you” sung or played commercially, the Moonwalker gets a cut, until 2010, when the verse’s copyright renewal expires.

Website design By BotEap.comThe copyright to the Hill sisters’ melody fell into the public domain long ago. Therefore, anyone has the right to freely write and sing his new words with the old melody.

Website design By BotEap.comThe song is sung so frequently, and often, the copyright owners and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers long ago stopped trying to collect royalties from families and service clubs.

Website design By BotEap.comSing Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions.

Website design By BotEap.com* * *

Website design By BotEap.comThere is no need to worry at all about performing the other two “hottest” songs.

Website design By BotEap.com“Traditional Scottish Farewell Song” It was originally a poem written in 1788 by Scottish poet Robert Burns. It is not known when the people began reciting the poem to the accompaniment of an old Highland air known as “The Miller’s Wedding”.

Website design By BotEap.comThe lyrics and music were first published together in 1796. Very quickly, “The good oldie times” became a universal goodnight song among British and American sentimentalists.

Website design By BotEap.comIt is best represented among a circle of friends with arms across the chest and holding hands with adjacent companions.

Website design By BotEap.com“Because he (she is) a good partner” is another party song originally popularized by the French but adopted and immortalized by the British. Note that “partner” is an Old English word for “partner” or “partners in a joint venture” and does not take gender into account.

Website design By BotEap.comEtude magazine says that the construction of the music is medieval French in the time of King Louis XIV. The French soldiers used “jolly” as an insult to the English General Marlborough.

Website design By BotEap.comAs is often the case, the insulted can turn an enemy’s curse into a term of approval. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for example.

Website design By BotEap.comThe Marlborough soldiers took their “good friend” home after the war, and there it became a popular tune in pubs.

Website design By BotEap.comAround 1830, someone added a second verse: “We will not go home until morning, until daylight appears.” The song, therefore, is sung correctly in two verses.

Website design By BotEap.comWe can speculate how long it will take “Spread the barrel” also to take your place very close “Happy Birthday to you.”

Website design By BotEap.comIf I know the Americans, it won’t be long.

Website design By BotEap.comNovember 18, 2001