The story behind the song: Happy Birthday - Telegraph
Music
The story behind the song: Happy Birthday
A gift that keeps on giving: the foundation through which royalties are paid still receives several million dollars of income a year. 
12:01AM BST 25 Sep 2008
The first in a four-part series looking at the origins of some of the world's most popular melodies
Happy Birthday had its origins in 1893, when Mildred Hill, a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, put together a simple little tune. Whether she composed it entirely out of her head, or was influenced by other "folk song" fragments, is not clear. But when her younger sister Patty (also a teacher) added words, the groundwork was laid for a very pleasing song. They called it Good Morning to All:
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.
Good Morning to All was initially intended, and used, as a welcoming song to be sung by the teacher to the class each morning. But when it was published later in 1893, in a book of songs for kindergartens, it proved to be popular in reverse - children sang it to their teachers, rather than the other way round, and the word "children" was popularly replaced by "teacher". So the song gently morphed into Good Morning to You.
In this form, young children across the United States began to sing the song. The slow development from Good Morning to Happy Birthday seems to have come from children themselves, with encouragement from Patty Hill, who helped create the new lyric when children liked the song enough to want to sing it at parties.
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In 1924, Good Morning to All, with Happy Birthday to You printed as an optional second verse, was published. By then, radio was gaining attention and movies were beginning to take hold. The Happy Birthday words supplanted the earlier version, and in 1931 the song appeared in the Broadway show Band Wagon, then became a "singing telegram" for Western Union in 1933, and surfaced again in Irving Berlin's show As Thousands Cheer in 1934.
The third Hill sister, Jessica, believing that Patty and Mildred should have the credit for the now very popular song, and some profit from it, went into battle. Later in 1934 she was able to establish legal copyright to her sisters for their song, and it was officially published in 1935 as Happy Birthday. Since then, two legal changes in America's copyright system have made Happy Birthday copyright until 2030.
Fortunately this does not rule out its being sung privately, as it is at countless parties. It has been named in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the three most-sung songs in the English language, along with For He's a Jolly Good Fellow and Auld Lang Syne.
But the copyright can be enforced when the song is used in a public place where a larger group than a family is gathered, such as a sports event. Royalties must be paid if the song is ever part of a profit-making enterprise, such as a television show, a commercial stage performance or movie; or is built into toys, music boxes, watches, mobile phones and "singing" birthday cards.
The copyright sometimes shows its teeth. Leonard Bernstein's 1944 musical On the Town featured a fragment of Happy Birthday in a nightclub scene. Soon after its opening, the show was threatened by the song's owners, permission to use it was withheld and the fragment disappeared from the score.
American classical composer Roy Harris's symphonic piece Celebration, a tribute to fellow composer Howard Hanson, included references to the Happy Birthday tune. After Celebration's premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1946, Variety magazine reported that Harris, having been notified of the copyright law, had been obliged to remove the offending section.
Even esteemed Russian composer Igor Stravinsky fell foul of the legal system. Having heard orchestral members sing and play Happy Birthday, in 1955 he used the melody in a symphonic composition, assuming it was a folk song. He was firmly told it was not.
In order to deal with their fully copyrighted property, the Hill sisters established a foundation through which royalties were paid until their death, and which still receives several million dollars of income a year. In 2002 the mayor of Louisville dedicated a Happy Birthday parking lot near Main Street, with a commemorative plaque telling the story of the local sisters who composed the famous song.
Although Happy Birthday has only four short musical phrases, and a single repetitive line of words, it has become a part of the musical landscape. It is sung all over the world in many languages - by one estimate, several million times a year - often to children who are too young even to know what the song is about, but also to just about everyone else.
Two performances of the song are particularly famous. At President John F Kennedy's birthday concert in May 1962, Marilyn Monroe gave a brief but sultry and memorable performance of the song. Sadly, it was Monroe's last major public appearance: she died three months later. Seven years afterwards, in 1969, the song had its longest-distance broadcast when the crew of the orbiting Apollo 9 sang Happy Birthday to NASA director Christopher Kraft.
Taken from 'Love Me Tender: The Stories Behind the World's Favourite Songs' by Max Cryer, published by Frances Lincoln on Oct 23.