Word: anthem
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tune spawned two #1's (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen) in its first incarnation. There were four more hit versions in 1944-45. In 1959 smooth Sammy Turner took the song to #2 on the R&B chart (#19 pop). Finally it became Patsy Cline's post-mortem anthem; the Virginia thrush's rendition hit #18 on the country chart in 1980, 17 years after her death. And still it didn't die: a tribute musical called "Patsy Cline ... Always," with the song as its emotional centerpiece, played a two-year Nashville run that ended in 1995 - 70 years...
...gold standard ("Debts," with the couplet "Uncle Sam will be in heaven/ When the dollar goes to hell"), salving the wounds of the Depression ("Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee") and, of course, fighting Hitler ("Till We Hang the Paper Hanger"). In the 1950s, he wrote an anthem for Israel...
...lyric (no more "Make her victorious") and depoliticized it (no more "to the right" because, as he said, "in 1938, there was a right and a left and it had a different significance"). It was now a simple plea for divine protection in a dark time - a plangent anthem in just 40 words...
...Bless America" never made it to #1; Smith's version went to #10, then #5 in a reissue the following year, when war erupted in Europe. But it quickly became the second National Anthem and, over the decades, has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties...
...Berlin could twist his lyrics to make fun of himself and others. During the Vietnam War, the Republican composer wrote a new version of his anthem to tweak his left-wing friend, the lyricist E.Y. Harburg: "God bless America,/Land I enjoy,/ No discussions with Russians/ Till they stop sending arms to Hanoi." He also knew that, at the right moment, patriotism could sell songs...