Happy Days Are Here Again

This little ditty has been running through my mind today.  No, it was not like yesterday's dream song.  This is simply a happy little song that goes, (I think) something like this:

"Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again;
So, let's sing a song of cheer again, happy days are here again."

I have been wondering since I got up this morning just how it was this song writer was so possessed with his day's happiness he wanted to tell the world about it.  It sounds at though he/she had just come through a very bad time, or series of events.  My thinking being maybe it was written just after the Great Depression, and the country was breathing a great sigh of relief. 

Well, you know me, and thanks to the wealth of information at my fingertips I had to find out...and here we go again.
 
Thanks to Wikipedia, I've learned the song was written and copyrighted in 1929, by two gentlemen I never even heard of until this morning.  A man named Milton Ager who wrote the music and Jack Yeller, who provided the lyrics.  Supposedly the song was recorded by the Leo Reisman Orchestra with some guy I've also never heard of (Lou Levin) providing the vocal. 

Apparently, "Happy Days Are Here Again" seemed to strike a cord for just about every occasion, and there is a long list of films, in which the song can be heard.  It first appeared in a 1930 film titled 'Chasing Rainbows', in which the song concluded the picture, in what film historian Edwin Bradley described as a "pull-out-all-the-stops Technicolor finale, against a Great War Armistice show-within-a-show backdrop."^[

This film was followed by another film in 1936 with the same name, "Happy Days Are Here Again."

Perhaps the song is best remembered as the campaign song of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's successful run for president in 1932, and who's new deals and programs  did indeed bring the country out of it's Great Depression.  Happy Days were in deed, "Here Again."

Over the years this ditty has been sung by many entertainers in the style in which it was written, happy and upbeat.  However, there was one entertainer who defied convention and rather than singing the song at the pace it was intended, sang it slowly and so expressively, today it remains an outstanding rendition.  This entertainer's name is none other than Ms. Barbra Streisand.  I, in particular remember seeing it on television, preformed in her format, with another singing icon as a duet with the one and only Judy Garland...on the Judy Garland Show...it was a show stopper. 

It's no wonder this song is difficult to forget, and outstandingly easy to remember.  So, here for your listening pleasure...turn up the sound in your head is:

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

Music and lyrics by Milton Ager and Jack Yeller

So long sad times
Go long bad times
We are rid of you at last

Howdy gay times
Cloudy gray times
You are now a thing of the past

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again

Altogether shout it now
There's no one
Who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again

Your cares and troubles are gone
There'll be no more from now on
From now on ...

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, Let's sing a song of cheer again

Happy times
Happy nights
Happy days
Are here again!

Wishing you a Happy Day today.