Who recorded it first

You Are My Sunshine

Not a Jimmie Davis original — a 1939 Pine Ridge Boys single on Bluebird

“You Are My Sunshine” is so completely fused to Jimmie Davis — who put his name on the copyright, rode it to the Louisiana governor’s mansion and had it made the state song — that he is assumed to have sung it first. He did not. The Pine Ridge Boys, an Atlanta duo of Doug Spivey and Marvin Taylor, cut it for Bluebird in Atlanta on 22 August 1939 and it was issued on 6 October 1939 with no songwriter credit at all; the Rice Brothers’ Gang cut it for Decca on 13 September 1939, credited to Paul Rice. Davis and steel player Charles Mitchell bought the song outright from Rice, copyrighted it on 30 January 1940 and recorded it on 5 February 1940.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
You Are My Sunshine — The Pine Ridge Boys
Recorded
22 August 1939, Atlanta, Georgia (Victor matrix BS-041254, take 1)
Released
6 October 1939 — Bluebird B-8263, b/w “Farther Along”
Songwriter on label
None printed

Released Issued by Bluebird Records on 6 October 1939 as a 10-inch 78rpm single, catalogue B-8263, backed with “Farther Along.” Recorded in Atlanta, Georgia on 22 August 1939 as Victor matrix BS-041254, take 1. The label carried no songwriter credit.

Charted It did chart — but late, and in the wake of the covers. The Pine Ridge Boys’ original reached number 4 on Billboard’s embryonic Top Hillbilly Recordings of the Month in the issue dated 26 October 1940, after the Bob Atcher and Jimmie Davis versions had made the song famous.

Hear The Pine Ridge Boys’ 1939 Bluebird recording — the first version ever committed to disc. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “Pine Ridge Boys - Topic” channel, carrying the line “Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises” with a ℗ 2010 Master Classics Records reissue line. Running time 2:46, matching the 2:45 length recorded for the Pine Ridge Boys recording in MusicBrainz and in the Wikipedia infobox for the 1939 Bluebird single — so this is the original take, not a later re-cut.

The paper trail

The Discography of American Historical Recordings ↗ lists Bluebird B-8263 as Victor matrix BS-041254, take 1, recorded 8/22/1939, “You are my sunshine / The Pine Ridge Boys,” coupled with “Farther along.”

The Library of Congress National Recording Registry essay ↗ by Ronnie Pugh states that two Atlanta-area groups recorded the song first, both in the latter half of 1939, and that there is no composer credit on the Pine Ridge Boys record while “Paul Rice” appears on the Rice Brothers’ Decca 5763.

The same essay dates the Davis session to 5 February 1940 at Decca’s New York studios, released as Decca 5813, and reports the 1956 Shreveport Times account of Rice selling all rights for $35.

Wikipedia’s article ↗ cites Tony Russell’s Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921–1942 for the 22 August 1939 date and records the Pine Ridge Boys’ number 4 peak on 26 October 1940.

Wikipedia: the recording history of “You Are My Sunshine”
Know more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →

Paste a URL and we’ll check it. This doesn’t change the page — it goes to our review queue, and if it holds up we update the record.

Fact-check

Setting the record straight

Jimmie Davis owned the song, sang the definitive version and was buried in its reputation — but he was the fourth act to record it, not the first.

The beliefWidely held

Jimmie Davis originated “You Are My Sunshine” in 1940.

Davis copyrighted it, made the hit record, campaigned on it and had it named Louisiana’s state song. The National Recording Registry listing is under his name and the year 1940.

The originalConfirmed

The Pine Ridge Boys — Doug Spivey and Marvin Taylor — Bluebird B-8263.

Recorded in Atlanta on 22 August 1939 as Victor matrix BS-041254 and released on 6 October 1939, backed with “Farther Along.” Confirmed by the Discography of American Historical Recordings and by the Library of Congress registry essay.

Also before DavisOften forgotten

The Rice Brothers’ Gang (Decca 5763) and Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes (Vocalion/Okeh 05370).

The Rice Brothers cut it on 13 September 1939 credited to Paul Rice; Atcher recorded it in mid-January 1940, before Davis’s own session, and it was that version that went to number 1 on the Billboard hillbilly listing in July 1940.

The writerDisputed

Credited to Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell — genuinely disputed.

Davis and Mitchell bought all rights from Paul Rice for $35 and copyrighted the song on 30 January 1940. Rice said he wrote it in 1937; supporters of Oliver Hood of LaGrange, Georgia date it to the early 1930s. The first record to carry it named nobody at all.

First on record: The Pine Ridge Boys, Bluebird B-8263, recorded 22 August 1939, released 6 October 1939. Jimmie Davis recorded it on 5 February 1940.

Context

How a Bluebird 78 with no writer on the label became a governor’s calling card

Two things happened to the Pine Ridge Boys’ record. The first is that it went out with a blank where the songwriter’s name should have been — Bluebird simply printed no credit — which left the song legally unclaimed and commercially available to anyone who noticed it. Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell noticed. According to a 1956 Shreveport Times account, they went to KWKH to see Paul Rice, whose wife was in hospital and who needed cash for her bills, and bought all rights for $35, seventeen dollars fifty apiece.

The second thing is stranger and more human: the original did not die. It charted. The Pine Ridge Boys’ 1939 Bluebird disc reached number 4 on Billboard’s embryonic Top Hillbilly Recordings of the Month in the issue of 26 October 1940 — well after release, apparently carried along by the public appetite that the Davis and Bob Atcher versions had created. The original became a beneficiary of the cover that buried it.

The full 1939-1941 chronology
  • 22 August 1939 — The Pine Ridge Boys record “You Are My Sunshine” in Atlanta for Bluebird (Victor matrix BS-041254, take 1).
  • 6 October 1939 — Bluebird issues it as B-8263, backed with “Farther Along.” No songwriter is credited on the label.
  • 13 September 1939 — The Rice Brothers’ Gang, Atlanta men then based in Shreveport, cut it for Decca in New York during an eighteen-song marathon session. Issued as Decca 5763, credited to “Paul Rice.”
  • Mid-January 1940 — Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes record a third pre-Davis version, released on Vocalion/Okeh 05370. Its label already credits Davis and Mitchell as composers.
  • 30 January 1940 — Southern Music Publishing enters the Davis-Mitchell copyright, after Davis and Mitchell buy all rights from Paul Rice for $35.
  • 5 February 1940 — Davis records the famous version with Charles Mitchell’s Orchestra at Decca, New York; issued as Decca 5813.
  • 26 October 1940 — the Atcher version having gone to number 1 that July, the Pine Ridge Boys’ own 1939 original peaks at number 4 on the Billboard hillbilly listing.
  • 18 June 1941 — Gene Autry records it for Okeh; his version tops the hillbilly chart that September and helps make the song a permanent standard.
The label printed no songwriter at all. That blank space is the whole story.

The original recording artist

The Pine Ridge Boys

Doug Spivey and Marvin Taylor, Atlanta close-harmony duo

Doug Spivey and Marvin Taylor were an old-time close-harmony duo out of the Atlanta area — two guitars and yodels, the format that filled Bluebird’s Southern field sessions in the late 1930s. They cut “You Are My Sunshine” in Atlanta on 22 August 1939 as Victor matrix BS-041254, and Bluebird released it on 6 October 1939 backed with “Farther Along.” The label carried no songwriter credit whatsoever. Spivey later told researchers a version of the song’s origin closely matching Paul Rice’s — both traced the idea to a young woman in South Carolina.

Popularly credited as the original

Jimmie Davis

1899-2000, American country singer and two-term governor of Louisiana

James Houston Davis was a Shreveport court clerk turned Decca star who built a career partly by buying songs outright — a normal, openly practised transaction in the pre-war business, not a scandal. He recorded “You Are My Sunshine” with Charles Mitchell’s Orchestra at Decca’s New York studios on 5 February 1940, and that record, Decca 5813, is the one the world actually knows. It carried him into film, into the Louisiana governor’s office, and eventually into the National Recording Registry. Interviewed by Dorothy Horstman in 1975, Davis notably did not claim to have written it — he simply told its history.

The songwriter

Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell (credited)

Charles Mitchell, 1904-1972, American songwriter and steel guitarist

The copyright entered by Southern Music on 30 January 1940 names Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell, and it was renewed in both names in 1967 — but the authorship is genuinely disputed. Paul Rice said he wrote it in 1937 after a letter from a woman in South Carolina, and his name is the credit printed on the Rice Brothers’ Gang’s Decca 5763. Descendants and associates of the LaGrange, Georgia musician Oliver Hood say he wrote it in the early 1930s and first performed it publicly in 1933. Rice’s own summary of the situation was that at least twenty people claimed to have written it.