OK OK, I got this in my email box. I read it and being the sap I am I thought you all would like to have me share this wonderful piece of Americana. If you get tears in your eyes, then you have allowed yourself to be a real human being. Oh, watch for a young Ronald Reagan and George Murphy. Murphy was a California US Senator later in his life.
A BIT OF NOSTALGIA FROM LONG , LONG AGO
Do you remember Kate Smith?
Frank Sinatra considered Kate Smith the best
singer of her time, and said that when he and a million other guys first
heard her sing "God Bless America" on the radio, they all pretended to
have dust in their eyes as they wiped away a
tear or two.
Here are the facts...
The link at the bottom will take you to a video
showing the very first public singing of "GOD BLESS AMERICA". But
before you watch it, you should also know the story behind the first
public showing of the song.
The time was 1940. America was still in a
terrible economic depression. Hitler was taking over Europe and
Americans were afraid we'd have to go to war. It was a time of hardship
and worry for most Americans.
This was the era just before TV, when radio
shows were HUGE, and American families sat around their radios in the
evenings, listening to their favorite entertainers, and no entertainer
of that era was bigger than Kate Smith.
Kate was also large; plus size, as we now say, and the popular phrase still used today is in deference to her, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings". Kate Smith might
not have made it big in the age of TV, but with her voice coming over the radio, she was the biggest star of her time.
Kate was also patriotic. It hurt her to see
Americans so depressed and afraid of what the next day would bring. She
had hope for America, and faith in her fellow Americans. She wanted to
do something to cheer them up, so she went to
the famous American song-writer, Irving Berlin (who also wrote "White
Christmas") and asked him to write a song that would make Americans feel
good again about their country. When she described what she was
looking for, he said he had just the song for her.
He went to his files and found a song that he
had written, but never published, 22 years before - way back in 1917. He
gave it to and she worked on it with her studio orchestra. She and
Irving Berlin were not sure how the song would
be received by the public, but both agreed they would not take any
profits from God Bless America. Any profits would go to the Boy Scouts
of America. Over the years, the Boy Scouts have received millions of
dollars in royalties from this song.
This video starts out with Kate Smith coming
into the radio studio with the orchestra and an audience. She introduces
the new song for the very first time, and starts singing. After the
first couple verses, with her voice in the background
still singing, scenes are shown from the 1940 movie, "You're In The
Army Now." At the 4:20 mark of the video you see a young actor in the
movie, sitting in an office, reading a paper; it's Ronald Reagan.
To this day, God Bless America stirs our
patriotic feelings and pride in our country. Back in 1940, when Kate
Smith went looking for a song to raise the spirits of her fellow
Americans, I doubt whether she realized just how successful
the results would be for her fellow Americans during those years of
hardship and worry..... and for many generations of Americans to
follow. Now that you know the story of the song, I hope you'll enjoy it
and treasure it even more.
Many people don't know there's a lead in to the
song since it usually starts with "God Bless America....." So here's the
entire song as originally sung.
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Real name thank you.