Bye Bye Blackbird (1926)

Made popular by Gene Austin 1926

The song “Bye Bye Blackbird” was introduced to me by my old friend, Karna. She always had a couple of Reader’s Digest books hanging around the piano at her place, with titles like “Collection of Popular Songs” and “Festival of Popular Songs.” We would get together to write and sing songs, and she would pop open one of these books for us to try out. The songs were either entirely new to me or buried deep in my past. “Bye Bye Blackbird” quickly became a favorite, especially for harmonizing. It was one of the first songs we tried with EVO, some forty years later.

To this day, I still set one of those books on the piano, search the titles, and play one of those old tunes.

“Bye Bye Blackbird”, written in 1926 by composer Ray Henderson with lyrics by Mort Dixon, has been covered by countless artists over the years, including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis. I am told (or ChatGPT tells me) that “the earliest and most influential recording was by Gene Austin in 1926.” Austin, an early crooner, used a microphone for a more intimate vocal style, a technique later used by Frank Sinatra.

Paul McCartney released a version several years ago that includes an introductory verse I had never heard before, so we don’t sing it, although it is from the Gene Austin track. One of the more unique versions of the song is Joe Cocker’s rendition from the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack.

Joe Cocker