history

happy birthday | 2016-08-31

permafrown

31 Aug 2016 — 2 min read

in 1873, the sisters Patti and Mildred Hill, a school principal and a composer, respectively, wrote a little ditty to welcome Patti’s charges into the classroom at the beginning of each day. that tune was called ‘Good Morning to All‘.

by 1912, the combination of the tune from ‘Good Morning to All‘ and the lyrics ‘Happy Birthday to You‘ was appearing in many places, albeit without credit or copyright notes.

in 1935, the Summy Company registered copyright of the song. in 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the predecessor of Summy for a cool $25 million USD. The song itself was valued at $5 million USD in that deal.

Warner/Chappell Music‘s copyright demanded royalties for any public performance of the song, one time receiving $700 USD (Feb., 2010) for a single performance. All told, it is estimated that they made roughly $50 million USD in royalties from the song.

sub. ‘my friend’ for ‘Katrina’

in 2013, Good Morning to You Productions sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright over the song.

in September, 2015, the Warner/Chappell Music copyright claim was ruled as invalid by a federal judge, stating that the right claimed was for only a specific piano arrangement of the song. they settled the case for $14 million USD, and the song was released into public domain.

here’s a fun snippet about the song’s use in various places (Canada is silly this way):

In Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Ireland, immediately after “Happy Birthday” has been sung, it is traditional for one of the guests to enthusiastically lead with “Hip hip…” and then for all of the other guests to join in and say “… hooray!” This is normally repeated three times. In Canada, especially at young children’s birthdays, immediately after “Happy Birthday” has been sung, the singers segue into “How old are you now? How old are you now? How old are you now-ow, how old are you now?” and then count up: “Are you one? Are you two? Are you…” until they reach the right age, at which the celebrant says “yes”, and everybody else, who presumably know the right number, all cheer. (ref)

so, happy birthday to my lovely wife — may your copyright be ever in the right hands and may you never fall into the public domain. love you!

so far on Happy Birthday

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