If You're Happy And You Know It: A Song History

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"If You're Happy and You Know It" was already in print by 1957, when Richard G. Kraus included it, with verses for clapping and stamping, in Play Activities for Boys and Girls, Six Through Twelve, a McGraw-Hill guide for teachers, parents and recreation leaders.[1] In June 1957 the Latter-day Saints magazine The Improvement Era described a family taking turns inventing new verses and singing them to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain."[2] A Louisiana day-care curriculum guide, dated 1964 in its ERIC record, also names "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain" as the tune.[3]

Ink drawing of a woman in a long dress playing blind man's bluff with two small children beside a flowering bush

Lorenz Frølich, A Mother and Two Children Playing Blind Man's Bluff, pen and ink with wash, 1800s. A mother and children at a game, shown for the song's use as a children's action song; it has no connection to the song.

The Library of Congress's Catalog of Copyright Entries for the first half of 1971 lists a registration under this title by Jonico Music, Inc., dated January 29, 1971, which credits the words and music to Joe Raposo.[4] Raposo was the first musical director of Sesame Street, according to Georgetown University Library's guide to his papers.[5] American Songwriter says the song's author is unknown and that Raposo, though credited, did not originally write it; without naming its sources, the magazine also repeats claims that the melody echoes the Soviet song "Molodejnaya" or that the song began in Spain, Latin America or Latvia, none of which the sources consulted here confirm.[6] At least one later arranger treated it as traditional: a 1978 copyright entry for "Happy with Jesus," an arrangement for piano and chorus, says its words and music come from a nursery folk song.[7]

Mike Anderson's Sunday Songs For Kids, a Fingers Of Steel book devoted mainly to Christian songs for children, sets it in DAD tuning; every song in the book appears twice, the second version adding verses and chords so that dulcimer, guitar, banjo or any other chord-playing instrument can take part.[8]

Our book that contains the song "If You're Happy And You Know It"

Sources

  1. Internet Archive: "Play Activities for Boys and Girls, Six Through Twelve" (Richard G. Kraus, McGraw-Hill, 1957).
  2. Internet Archive: "The Improvement Era" (June 1957).
  3. ERIC (Internet Archive): "Day Care Center Curriculum Guide" (ED030237).
  4. Library of Congress Copyright Office: "Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series, Part 5: Music, January-June 1971".
  5. Georgetown University Library: "Joe Raposo Papers".
  6. American Songwriter: "Behind the Joyous Song 'If You're Happy and You Know It'".
  7. Library of Congress Copyright Office: "Catalog of Copyright Entries, Fourth Series, Part 3: Performing Arts, July-September 1978".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Sunday Songs For Kids".
  9. Image: Lorenz Frølich, A Mother and Two Children Playing Blind Man's Bluff, pen and ink with wash, 1800s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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