God Bless America: A Song History

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Irving Berlin first wrote "God Bless America" in 1918 while stationed at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, meaning it as the finale of his army revue Yip, Yip, Yaphank.[1][2] He decided it did not suit the show and left it unused for two decades.[1][2] In the fall of 1938, with war looming in Europe, he brought the old song out of storage and reshaped it as a song of peace; the earliest version the Library of Congress describes as final is dated November 2.[1] In his own account, Berlin insisted that he rewrote the song rather than merely reviving it.[2]

Colored print of the Statue of Liberty on its pedestal and star-shaped base, with sailing ships in New York harbor behind.

Currier & Ives, The Great Bartholdi Statue – Liberty Enlightening the World, hand-colored lithograph, 1885. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Kate Smith introduced it on her CBS radio program on November 10, 1938, the day before Armistice Day, now Veterans Day.[2][3][4] Berlin took no royalties, assigning them instead to a fund for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.[1][4] In a 2013 NPR interview, Sheryl Kaskowitz, author of a book-length history of the song, said the song drew an anti-Semitic backlash because Berlin was a Jewish immigrant, and that the Ku Klux Klan boycotted it.[4]

In that interview, host Robert Siegel called its role after September 11, 2001, when members of Congress sang it together, "the great apotheosis of this song."[4] When Major League Baseball resumed play that September, clubs replaced "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" with it at the seventh-inning stretch at Commissioner Bud Selig's request, and some teams kept it in regular use for years afterward.[5] Judy House includes it in Patriotic Songs Of The U.S., her collection of mountain dulcimer arrangements in tablature.[6]

Our book that contains the song "God Bless America"

Sources

  1. Library of Congress, Patriotic Melodies: "God Bless America".
  2. The Irving Berlin Music Company: "God Bless America".
  3. Library of Congress, In the Muse: "Sheet Music of the Week: 'God Bless America' on Veterans Day".
  4. NPR: "Encore: For 'God Bless America,' A Long Gestation And Venomous Backlash".
  5. Deseret News (Associated Press): "'God Bless America' and baseball 10 years later".
  6. Judy House: "Patriotic Songs Of The U.S.".
  7. Image: Currier & Ives, The Great Bartholdi Statue – Liberty Enlightening the World, hand-colored lithograph, 1885. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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