God Bless America!

Irving Berlin once said that, "a patriotic song is an emotion and you must not embarrass an audience with it, or they will hate your guts." This philosophy made him one of America's most outstanding writers of patriotic songs from World War I through World War II.

It is perhaps fitting that this greatest of all patriotic songs was written by the son of Jewish immigrants, who came here to escape the pograms in Russia.

Today's younger generations may not be familiar with the origin and history of the song Irving Berlin considered his most important composition. It was written during the First World War, for an army camp show where Berlin was stationed: Camp Yaphank on Long Island. The show's producers rejected it as too jingoistic, so Berlin placed it in a trunk of rejected manuscripts.

There it lay for twenty years, until Ted Collins, manager of popular singer Kate Smith, approached Irving Berlin for a new patriotic song for Kate to introduce to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I. Berlin had recently returned from a trip to England, during which he was saddened to see signs of another war in the making. He was more thankful than ever to come back to his peaceful adopted homeland (his family had come to America from Russia when Irving was a small boy), so he was motivated to answer Collins' request, on Kate's behalf.

After several days of futile attempts to write a new patriotic song, Berlin remembered the one he had written in 1918. Yes - God Bless America.

And Berlin (and indeed Kate Smith) never earned a penny from the song - instead, they donated every Dime to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. That arrangement exists to this day.

For a while, it stood a good chance of becoming the nation's new National Anthem as well, and the song - sung in person by Kate Smith - was used as a good luck charm by the Philadelphia Flyers' hockey team. The team erected a statue to her in 1987 - a year after she died.

And there you have it. I like this Martina McBride version, but there are many out there. I have also included Kate Smith singing the song at the Flyers' Stanley Cup game as described here.

Irving Berlin died on September 22, 1989, at the age of 101.

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(Copyright © 2008 By Simon L Conway All Rights Reserved.)

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