god bless america

[Guest.Visitor]

this song was written in the fall of 1918 for a musical review "Yip, Yip, Yaphank" ... but deemed to solemn by its author for the show's finale ... he, Irving Berlin put it on the shelf for twenty years until after the Czech scare in 1938 he altered some lyrics and gave it to Kate Smith to record.

[G.Gaunt]

god bless america

In my kindergarten, we always sang these words: "Stand beside her, And guide her, Through the night, With a light, From a bulb."

[David Abramowitz]

god bless america

Other Berlin tunes from the same show included "Oh how I hate to get up in the Morning", and the strange (for the time) anti-war song "I didn't raise my son to be a Soldier". Yaphank, now a Long Island bedroom suburb, was once full of potato farms until the army created a base there for World War I. The army deemed that Berlin was much too valuable as a morale tool, than as an infantryman. Good thing for all of us. Dave