Happy Birthday to The Star Spangled Banner!

by Percy Moran

Francis Scott Key catching that glimpse on September 13, 1814. Within five days, his poem had been circulated throughout Baltimore, with instructions that it should be sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven”, an already-existing British song.

Here is one of the original broadsides of the lyrics. It was called “The Defense of Fort McHenry” at the time.

The Star-Spangled Banner is one of the more difficult anthems to sing (I love that in Nashville, Hal Philip Walker, the unseen candidate for the Presidency of the United States, rolling around town in his van blasting his campaign promises into the apathetic air, says that he will make sure that he changes the National Anthem because “Nobody knows the words”), it starts low and catapults itself up high, and it has defeated even very good singers on occasion.

Some wonderful clips below of the singing/playing of the National Anthem. Lots of “confirming and denying”!

And here is what may be the most famous version.

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25 Responses to Happy Birthday to The Star Spangled Banner!

  1. ricki says:

    There’s a story (apocryphal and possibly false) of American troops picking up someone during WWII that they suspected was a German spy. They couldn’t get from any accent – he spoke perfect English. And he knew things, like for example about the Yankees.

    But then they asked him if he could sing the second verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

    He could, and that was what busted him.

    very few Americans know beyond the first verse (I don’t.)

  2. red says:

    ricki – wow, never heard that!

  3. Nightfly says:

    Because it’s hard to sing, every once in a while someone will grumble that it ought to be replaced with something like “America the Beautiful,” which, while a fine song, just isn’t the same thing. Nothing beats the moment when, after rising and doffing one’s cap, you hear that little intro – ba-ba BUMMMM…. ba BA bummm…

    (I think, BTW, that someone may have been unknowingly tapping into that moment, so ingrained into sports fans’ subconscious, when writing the Sports Center theme – na-na na! na-na na! It’s pretty close. That’s just my speculation, though.)

  4. ricki says:

    America the Beautiful is a lovely song but I prefer our current anthem. I love the fact that it’s moored to a very specific point in history – a point where there was fear we might cease to exist as a nation.

    “The flag was still there.” That line gives me goosebumps every time. I can imagine the feelings of the people, looking across the harbor, in hope and fear – and seeing that their greatest hope has been fulfilled, that the flag is still there.

  5. Doug Sundseth says:

    Have you seen the Isaac Asimov tribute to the Star Spangled Banner? IIRC, I first saw it as an editorial in the SF/F magazine that bears his name some years ago, though he might have been recycling the piece from somewhere else.

    You can find it here:

    http://www.purewatergazette.net/asimov.htm

    I strongly recommend it.

  6. red says:

    Doug – I cannot thank you enough for that link. Woah.

  7. Mr. Bingley says:

    It is difficult to sing because people sing it sober, when the tune is an old drinking song. I always try to sing it whilst inebriated, and it flows so much better.

  8. Mr. Bingley says:

    Wow, that is a great link.
    Asimov was great.

  9. Val Prieto says:

    Thank you for the reminder Sheila.

    Consider this a manual trackback as well.

    http://www.babalublog.com/archives/003970.html

  10. red says:

    Bingley – same thing with Danny Boy, another really hard song with, like, 2 octaves in it. But if you’re drunk? And in a pub with 20 drunk Irish people? It sounds awesome.

  11. Ken says:

    Holy Petunia, Doug–that’s brilliant. Thank you. Thank you.

  12. alli says:

    Blind girl question: Whats the top part of the graphic say? I can’t make out any of it. Is it important? :(

  13. red says:

    Alli – the top part of the broadside? It says:

    The annexed song was composed under the following circumstances – A gentleman had left Baltimore, in a flag of truce for the purpose of getting released from the British fleet, a friend of his who had been captured at Marlborough. — He went as far as the mouth of the Patuxent, and was not permitted to return lest the intended attack on Baltimore should be disclosed. — He was therefore brought up the bay to the mouth of the Patapsco, where the flag vessel was kept under the guns of a frigate, and he was compelled to witness the bombardment of Fort McHenry, which the Admiral had boasted that he would carry in a few hours, and that the city must fall. He watched the flag at the Fort through the whole day with an anxiety that can be better felt than described, until the night prevented him from seeing it. In the night he watched the Bomb Shells, and at early dawn his eye was again greeted by the proudly waving flag of his country.

  14. ricki says:

    Thank you, Doug. I had never seen that piece before. It’s really good. It made me well up a little and I’m not generally given to that sort of thing.

    THIS is why I love Sheila’s blog – you learn so much neat stuff. And not just from “red,” but from her commenters, too.

  15. JFH says:

    Geeky note: That Ft. McHenry flag hangs in the Smithsonian Museum (The American History one, obviously). and it was huge (30′ x 42′) although the right part has been frayed away.

    (Almost pulled a “Nigel” and used the inch symbol rather than the foot symbol)

  16. w says:

    ~~…and a fiiish in the sky…and a big….monkey pie…??~~

  17. red says:

    hahahahahahahahahaha

    Yes!!!

  18. alli says:

    hahahahaha.

    i love that someone else quotes eddie izzard. finally. my roommate and i were beginning to believe that we were alone…

  19. red says:

    Oh, no – you are TOTALLY among friends here, alli!!

    “Hitler never played Risk when he was a kid…..”

  20. red says:

    As the squirrel: “Did I leave the gas on? Of course not! I’m a fuckin’ squirrel!!”

  21. alli says:

    “damn i can’t get the fuckin’ trees…. i will everyone in the world”

    hahahahaha

  22. Nightfly says:

    ~~…and a fiiish in the sky…and a big….monkey pie…??~~

    Hey, it’s Enrico Palazzo!

  23. red says:

    alli – hahahahah that is one of my favorite moments!!

  24. alli says:

    mine too.. especially when one day my roomie who is the most passive/non-swearing person i’ve ever met, in the year and a half we lived together i never even saw her kill a fly or say anythign worse than crap! was trying to write an essay for her russian class and she said “dang i cannot get the stupid verb right… i will kill everyone in the WORLD”…

    hahahaha…

    um. maybe you just had to be there. seriously. still hilarious.

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