The Roamer washes his hands to history’s most popular song

With the prospect of another six months of the same overshadowing my recent birthday, I was singing it again when it dawned on me - “whoever wrote this must be making a fortune.”

And so it was, until quite recently!

An enormously complicated eight-page document abounding with legal jargon and technical specifications was officially rubber-stamped, signed, and carefully filed away by the Deputy Clerk of the United States District Court in the Central District of California on June 30, 2016.

It was the Final Order and Judgement of Case Number CV 13-04460-GHK(MRWx), signed that same day by the Honorable (American spelling) George H King, Chief United States District Judge.

Following the opening statement in thick, black, capital letters – ‘It is hereby ordered as follows’ - the eight page file contained 23 detailed orders on payments, expenses, notices and procedures, mostly in dense, legal jargon.

The sixth order in the file was much clearer and more simply laid out than the rest - ‘The Court hereby declares that, as of the Final Settlement Date, the Song entitled Happy Birthday to You! will be in the public demesne.’

With both the title of the song and the exclamation mark in italics - it’s better, grammatically, with the exclamation! - an expensive and long-running legal dispute had apparently ended.

“The story of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ (without an explanation mark) undoubtedly starts with Mildred Jane Hill and Patty Smith Hill,” wrote Professor Robert Brauneis in an academic paper for The George Washington University Law School in 2010.

Entitled ‘Copyright and the World’s Most Popular Song’ Professor Brauneis’s paper stated that the song I sing to wash my hands (as recommended by Prime Minister Boris Johnson) is unquestionably history’s most-sung song.

“If any reader knows of a serious contender for the title of the world’s most popular song, I would like to know it,” wrote the Professor, adding “the more popular ‘Happy Birthday to You’ has become, the more money it has made.”

He explained that the aforementioned Mildred Jane Hill (born 1859) and Patty Smith Hill (born 1868) were the children of Louisville (Kentucky) Presbyterian minister Reverend William Wallace Hill and his wife Martha Jane.

Professor Brauneis’s article outlines in immense detail how the song became one of the most disputed musical and lyrical compositions of all time, with enormous sums of money spent solving copyright fees and revenue and “hundreds of millions of royalty-free private performances every year.”

It’s a long and complicated story, perhaps for another time!

Meanwhile, Happy Birthday to You was hailed by the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records as “the most recognized song in the English language, followed by ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.

The famous birthday song is sung in just about every greater and lesser language around the world, including Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Hebrew, Indonesian, Irish, Korean, Ulster Scots, Mandarin, Norwegian and Tagalog and its original tune comes from the song called ‘Good Morning to All’, traditionally attributed to sisters Patty and Mildred Hill in 1893.

At the time, Patty was a kindergarten principal teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, developing various educational methods at the Little Loomhouse School.

Her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer.

The music and lyrics of the song ‘Good Morning to All’ with a third verse ‘Happy Birthday to You’ were printed in 1912 in The Beginners Book of Songs, though the Hill sisters’ 1893 melody wasn’t credited.

The words and music were also published in 1915 in the Golden Book of Favourite Songs, again with no credit to the Hills.

A plaque erected in in Louisville in 2002 claimed that ‘local history recounts’ that Patty Hill suggested during a birthday party that the words ‘good morning to all’ be changed to ‘happy birthday to you’.

Mildred Hill died in 1916 and Patty in 1946, and even though the use of the song was legally contested a number of times, none of the law suits produced a verdict on the song’s authorship or ownership.

After the lyrics of Happy Birthday to You appeared in a 1922 songbook and the piano music was published in 1935, a 95-year protection under copyright law was established.

The song’s copyright changed hands in 1988 and it was rarely heard in the movies or on TV because the royalties were quite high, according to some sources generating up to $2 million a year in licensing fees.

One of its most famous performances was Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of Happy Birthday to You to U.S. President John F. Kennedy in May 1962, and Roamer was privileged to see Danish comedy pianist Victor Borge play it in the style of Mozart, Brahms, Wagner and Beethoven in a Cardiff concert hall in 1973.

It was also ‘sung’ on Mars on August 5, 2013, celebrating the NASA Curiosity Rover Robot’s first anniversary.

The engineers at Goddard Space Flight Centre used the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to cause the Rover to ‘sing’ Happy Birthday on the Martian surface.

And today, thanks to the Honorable George H King, Roamer can sing it for free - with or without an explanation mark - while washing his ever-aging hands!