Songfacts®:

• Rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey wrote "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" the night after Phil Everly told him he should write his own material. It became his most successful song, charting at #75 in the United States.
• The song was later recorded by Ritchie Valens in 1958. Four years later, it was a minor hit for The Echoes, reaching #112 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles survey.
  
  The Beach Boys covered the song in 1968 with Mike Love on lead vocals, releasing it as a single on December 2, 1968. Their version peaked at #61 on the US Hot 100, #33 in the UK and #9 in the Netherlands.
• Robert Plant released a version of the song on his 2017 album Carry Fire featuring Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. Plant told Entertainment Weekly that when he was recording the track, he realized it could use a harmony, so he asked Hynde if she would sing on the tune and sent her a demo.
  
  "She was really, really positive and enthralled," he recalled.
  
  Plant added that the collaboration with Hynde was "a sort of psychedelic Sonny & Cher."
• Robert Plant told The Sun: "As a kid, I was into the Ritchie Valens version of 'Bluebirds Over The Mountain.' It's stunning and so simplistic. I was born in 1948, so in the middle of everything else happening today, what a relief to just sing a song that goes, 'Bring my baby back to me.'"