Here's two more of these. As I explained here, these are songs that Mel Blanc recorded in, I would guess, the mid-to-late fifties. He did one song for each month, wishing kids born in that month a Happy Birthday…all except for April, which is Ollie Owl (not your most famous Warner Brothers character) which was sung by someone else. Who is it? Beats me. The backup vocals are credited to the Sandpiper Chorus and Orchestra and my thought is that it was one of those folks.
But this does get me to wondering and maybe someone reading this (i.e., Greg Ehrbar) can clear something up. I'm familiar with the Sandpipers, a group consisting of Mike Stewart, Ralph Nyland, Dick Byron and Bob Miller. We wrote about them here and here and here.
Now, I always heard these Happy Birthday songs were recorded for Capitol Records and wound up being released instead by Golden Records…but I also thought Capitol and Mel Blanc recorded in Hollywood, so why is Mel being backed by a New York-based group? Also, the chorus on all of these seems to include one or two female voices…so is that the same four male Sandpipers plus friends? Anyone?
Here are Daffy and Ollie. The Daffy tune is especially good…
