Bye Bye Blackbird: A Song History

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"Bye Bye Blackbird" is a 1926 song with music by Ray Henderson and words by Mort Dixon, issued as sheet music that year by the New York publisher Jerome H. Remick & Co.[1]. The Songwriters Hall of Fame counts it among the Henderson melodies that became enduring standards[2], while a profile of Dixon, who set his lyric to Henderson's tune, calls it the lyricist's "tour de force"[3]. Remick also put out an "operatic edition" of the song featuring a photograph of Olive O'Neil[4]; the sources consulted here do not establish who first introduced the song on stage.

Kano School ink painting of a blackbird perched on a rock above breaking waves

Kano School, Blackbird on Wave-Swept Rock, hanging scroll, ink on silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its blackbird; it has no connection to the song.

Singers were recording it by the spring of 1926. Nick Lucas, with guitar and piano accompaniment, recorded it for Brunswick on 23 April 1926[5], and six days later the tenor Gene Austin cut it for Victor in New York, backed only by violin, cello and piano[6]; Victor released Austin's side on disc 20044 in July 1926[7]. One jazz writer credits Austin's record with making the song famous, and notes that a generation later Peggy Lee sang it on the soundtrack of the 1955 film Pete Kelly's Blues[8].

The tune went on to become a jazz standard[3][9], one that JazzStandards.com describes as long popular with instrumentalists and vocalists alike[3]. The Miles Davis quintet, with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, recorded it for Columbia in the mid-1950s (sources differ on the session date), and the track appeared on the album 'Round About Midnight[8][9]. The critic Tom Cunniffe calls that track "one of the essential modern jazz recordings," while cautioning that the song had never really dropped out of use before Davis took it up[10].

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Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Bye bye blackbird / lyric by Mort Dixon ; music by Ray Henderson" (Jerome H. Remick & Co., c1926).
  2. Songwriters Hall of Fame: "Ray Henderson".
  3. JazzStandards.com: "Mort Dixon".
  4. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mills Music Library: "Bye bye blackbird" (Remick, 1926, operatic edition).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Brunswick (U.K.) 3184 (10-in.)".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor matrix BVE-35354. Bye bye blackbird / Gene Austin".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor 20044 (Black label (popular) 10-in. double-faced)".
  8. ArtsJournal, Rifftides: post on Peggy Lee and Miles Davis (May 2019).
  9. Sound On Sound (Richard Buskin): "Classic Tracks: Miles Davis ‘Round Midnight’".
  10. Jazz.com (Tom Cunniffe): "Miles Davis: Bye Bye Blackbird".