Who wrote ‘Happy Birthday to you’?

Happy Birthday is one of the most popular songs written in the English Language, all of us love the tune, and love to sing it.

But have we ever questioned its origin? Where has the song come from? Who wrote it? Well I will answer these questions but firstly let me jot down some surprising facts about the song ‘Happy Birthday to you’.

-It was composed around 1890s.

-The song is currently owned by an American music publishing company.

-Yes it is copyrighted.

-The patent for the song exchanged hands in late 1990s for around $5 Million.

I have to admit that the first time I came across these facts; so now let’s have a look at the origins of the song.

If we look at a song called ‘Good Morning to All’ below, you will notice a considerable similarity between this song and ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

"Good Morning to All"

Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

Good morning, dear children,

Good morning to all.

‘Good Morning to All’ was written by two sisters, Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. Patty being a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, the sisters composed this song for young children to sing. It was included in a book called ‘Song Stories for the Kindergarten’ by Patty Hill.

Now the facts regarding who replaced the words with ‘Happy Birthday to You’ into the Hill sisters melody are a bit unclear. It is said that the children loved the song so much; they started singing it at birthday parties altering the lyrics to include the happy birthday theme. In 1924, Robert Coleman included the song ‘Good Morning to All’ with a second verse being ‘‘Happy Birthday to You’’ in a song book. It was also published in 1933 by Coleman in The American Hymnal.

In 1935 ‘Happy Birthday to You’ was first copyrighted by the Summy Company, the publisher of ‘Good Morning to all’, working with Jessica Hill, the third sibling of the Hill sisters.

The Summy Company was later purchased by an accountant named John F. Sengstack, who later renamed the company to Birch Tree Ltd.

Now in the resent past the rights to ‘Happy Birthday to You’  and the Birch Tree company were sold to the Time-Warner Corporation for around $25 million, valuing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ at around $5 million. Now it is said that royalty collected for ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in 2008 alone was almost $2 million, that’s $5000+ a day.

The royalties are shared between the Time-Warner Corporation and the successor of the original authors.

Now you will question who actually pays to perform ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Does it mean that you have to pay up every time this song is performed? No, royalties are due only for commercial use such as in movies, television shows, radio, as well as when the song is incorporated in musical greeting cards.

So some interesting points you will notice, movies or TV shows always end up not singing the Happy Birthday song , since a legal challenge would cost a great deal more than the $10,000 licensing fee, most filmmakers just pay Time-Warner or continue  without the song or have their characters sing things like, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

But one interesting point, Batman Begins has the entire song performed, but again it is a Warner Bros movie. You will notice it as one of the non-included tracks in the movie Soundtrack.

So just be aware the next time you sing a song, there is always an interesting tale just don’t end up unhappy when you have to pay for it.

Always while researching a topic we come across some very pleasant surprises. Here is one I came across. It’s a video of classical variations of Happy Birthday conducted by Zubin Mehta. Now I am not sure if he paid Warner or not for performing the song, but frankly I really don’t care. The performance on the other hand is stunning. Please enjoy.