“I Heard the Bluebirds Sing” was written in 1952 by Hod (Charles Hollis) Pharis, an Alberta songwriter and Western balladeer. Pharis recorded it that year with Anne Little on a 78-rpm record for the Aragon label of Vancouver. Also in 1952, Hal Lone Pine of Maine recorded it with his wife, Betty Cody, for RCA Victor in New York City, a version that carried the song through Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.
The Browns — Jim Ed, Maxine and Bonnie Brown — recorded it on 19 December 1956 at the RCA Victor studio in Nashville, with Chet Atkins producing and playing electric guitar, and RCA issued it as a single. It entered the charts in September 1957, peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s weekly country chart and No. 1 on Cash Box, and finished 1957 at No. 20 on Billboard’s year-end country list. It is on the RCA Victor album Jim and Maxine and Bonnie Brown and gave its name to a 1965 RCA Camden compilation.
The lyric follows a courtship and marriage through the seasons. A man meets a girl out in the hills and, in the spring, the bluebirds seem to sing of whether she loves him. They plan to marry in the spring, and through the long cold winter the birds sing of waiting; when spring comes they marry in the village church. Many years later their love is as strong as ever and the bluebirds still sing, now of sweethearts growing fonder with age.
Wink Martindale recorded it for Dot in 1963, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge on their 1973 duet album Full Moon, and Marty Robbins on Good ’n’ Country. The Greenbriar Boys recorded it for Better Late Than Never (Vanguard, 1966), with Frank Wakefield singing lead and playing mandolin, John Herald on guitar and harmony and Bob Yellin on banjo, and Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys recorded it at DBM Studios in Nashville in 1972 for The Jim & Jesse Show (Old Dominion).
In 2015 the song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
