Most of my "singing career" has involved singing for kids, mostly 12-year-olds or thereabouts. A song like this wouldn't appeal to them - they're too sophisticated.

But a few times recently, I've been asked to sing for four-year-olds, and entirely different audience. My four-year-old repertoire is a bit limited, but I was able to come up with a couple of half-hour concerts. I hadn't thought of this song, but it would be about right for four-year-olds. Guess that's why it doesn't appeal to Tim.   ;-)


Joyfulisa, I did the copyright research for the Rise Again Songbook, and it was a tough job. I worked with the copyright guy from our publisher, Hal Leonard, and he had the final say-so. My job was to give him evidence of the earliest publication date, or to find publisher information or contact the songwriter for permission if the song was still covered by copyright. Hal Leonard has rights to bajillions of songs, so I didn't have to bother with many of the 1200 songs in our book. He liked the work that I did, so it felt good to be appreciated by a well-known publisher.

I guess what I do to find if a song is in the public domain, is to look for the earliest published version of a song. Google books and archive.org can help a lot with that. For years the cutoff date for public domain was frozen at 1923, but that date has slowly been moving forward in recent years. You're pretty safe with anything up to 1930 now.

The Wikipedia article on Public Domain is pretty good.

Wikipedia: Ten in the Bed - 1988 Storybook