How We Got the 'Happy Birthday' Song; and the First Time Two College Sports Teams Played Each Other

It evolved from a short song written c. 1893 by Kentucky-born sisters Patty Smith Hill and Mildred Jane Hill for the students in Patty’s kindergarten class. Mildred, an accomplished concert pianist, organist, and composer, created the song’s melody, while Patty, who was also the small Louisville school house’s principal, wrote the lyrics. It went: 

‘Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

Good morning, dear children,

Good morning to all.’

It first appeared in print in their 1893 book Song Stories for Kindergarten, but how exactly it transitioned from a cheerful morning school day song for 5-year-olds to a short ditty celebrating the aging process is lost to history, and without a mainstream theory. 

In any case, the original remix first appeared in print, without permission from the Hill sisters, in a 1912 song book by a forgotten piano manufacturer, and would be featured again in Robert H. Coleman's Harvest Hymns in 1924, this time with the third stanza being ‘Happy birthday to you’ rather than ‘Good morning, dear children.’ The song’s notoriety exploded in the 1930s, primarily because of its inclusion - again without permission from the Hill family - in the 1931 Broadway musical The Band Wagon, and later, the 1933 production of As Thousands Cheer.