So on the face of it, this reconceptualizing and reworking of a great American classic seems unbelievable. Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” wasn’t all message alone musically, it was a bop! Most people who’ve sung the Hill sister’s version of “Happy Birthday” have done so a cappella musical accompaniment wasn’t needed because it was designed only for some light piano work. In effect, he transformed the “Happy Birthday” song into a black mainstay and global celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.: As a means for drawing more attention and energy to the cause, Stevie reworked an old American tradition into a pop song. Among the many hit singles on the album was the gem “Happy Birthday.” During this time, Stevie was one of the key figures of the campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a national holiday in America. In 1980, nearly 90 years after the birth of the Hill sister’s “Happy Birthday,” Stevie Wonder released Hotter Than July, at that time his biggest selling album to date. If you happened to be the person at the center of the celebration, it sounded magnificent no matter who was singing it to you. Anyone could croon out the “Happy Birthday” song and make it sound great. This simple but enduring lyric required no music or any special singing skills. In black and white homes alike, the “Happy Birthday” song was the song that family and friends turned to mark the anniversary of the birth of someone dear to them. In an unbearably long and dark period in America, where overt racism and legalized segregation (a legacy of slavery), governed the day, the “Happy Birthday” song was one of very few cultural traditions that was integrated. But the “Happy Birthday” song holds far greater significance than it’s sheer popularity. This celebratory tradition had grown so strong around the world that by the middle of the twentieth-century, it was already the most popular song in the English language. Hill, two white American sisters and kindergarten teachers from Louisville, KY, “Happy Birthday to You,” or simply “Happy Birthday,” was sung everywhere in America for the marking of the anniversary of someone’s birthday. But the tradition of singing the “Happy Birthday To You” song to the birthday person dates back farther to 1893. Singing Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” with the pulsing, rhythmic refrain: happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday…, has been a black American tradition at birthday parties since the early ‘80s.
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