Yellow Bird

Album

Single

Label

HiFi Records

Genre

Exotica

Media Type

45

Duration

2:41

Composer(s)

Alan Bergman;Marilyn Keith;Norman Luboff.

Entered Chart

May 29, 1961

Peak Date

Jul 24, 1961

Released

Mar 1961

Recorded

Unknown

Catalog #

Hi Fi H-5024

B-Side

Havah Nagilah

The English rendering of "Choucoune", "Yellow Bird", first appeared on the album Calypso Holiday, a 1957 release by the Norman Luboff Choir, with Luboff having arranged the song in the calypso style that become popular in the English-speaking world in the mid-1950s. The lyrics for "Yellow Bird", by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, have no connection with the narrative of the Durand poem—other than the poem features the words "ti zwazo" (little bird) in its refrain, and so the original Haitian song is sometimes called "Ti Zwazo" or "Ti Zwezo". The song became a minor hit at number 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the Mills Brothers in 1959. Its most successful incarnation came in the summer of 1961 when the Arthur Lyman Group reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the newly formed Easy Listening chart with their Hawaiian-flavored instrumental version, which bested a rival instrumental single release by Lawrence Welk (US number 61; CAN number 5)

instrumental