On the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America (VIDEOS)

Well, yes, the Star Spangled Banner is a hard song to sing. But we wanted to start off your day with our national anthem with a bang. SO:

OK…maybe that wasn’t quite it…so let’s try someone famous like Michael Bolton (who was a friend of my brother’s when we grew up in Connecticut):

Let’s try it one more time. Perhaps a non-professional will get it right:

But some have put a new twist on it and gotten it right…like the late Marvin Gaye in 1983:

Still, frankly, THIS 20th century song is the song I like the best..and can move me to tears. Here’s the song being introduced by the singer who helped made Irving Berlin’s song so famous. Look VERY closely at the end and you’ll see a famous face:

Even as I watched this, tears came to my eyes.

Here’s a remastered vocal of Smith singing the song:

Here she is doing a medley of World War II era songs on TV in the early 60s, ending with God Bless America (at 3:35). This is one of her most powerful versions on video.

In 1976, towards the end of her life and her health clearly declining (her final years were very sad as she faced terrible health problems), Kate Smith sang the song before a big audience again — her passion and the song’s power undiminished:

FOOTNOTE: Smith (who died in 1986 at the age of 79) was of my grandparents’/parents’ generations. I loved the song God Bless America, in melody and in lyric, and sought out her work due to that.

No one sang that song — our country’s real, emotional, unofficial national anthem — than she did.