April 5, 1939: Kate Smith's Recording of "God Bless America" Is Released

Kate Smith, The Spectrum, May 19, 1974

April 5, 1939: Columbia Records releases Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America." It becomes her signature song, and, behind the official "The Star-Spangled Banner," America's secondary National Anthem.

Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Belarus, then in the Russian Empire, wrote the song in 1918, while serving in the U.S. Army for World War I, for a musical revue titled Yip, Yip, Yaphank, but decided it didn't fit in with the rest of the show, and put it aside.

In 1938, with the Nazi threat rising, Berlin felt it was time to use the song. Kate Smith sang it on an Armistice Day broadcast on November 11. That broadcast was on CBS, which also owned Columbia Records, for whom she recorded. She recorded the song, and it was released.

Millions of Americans took to the song as an example of patriotism in World War II. Millions of others did not. Woody Guthrie, a folksinger with leftist leanings, wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a response in 1940. And the Ku Klux Klan, a white Protestant supremacist organization that hated Catholics and Jews as much as it hated black people, denounced the song because of its Jewish origin.

In 1943, the musical film This Is the Army was released, with all Berlin songs, including Smith singing "God Bless America," and Berlin himself singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning." Years later, after Smith had switched from CBS to NBC, she sang the song on her TV shows on that network.

On December 11, 1969, instead of a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers played Smith's recording of "God Bless America" before their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flyers won, 6-3.

Hockey, as much as -- and sometimes, it seems, more than -- any other sport, is laden with superstitious people. The Flyers took the win as a good sign, and began to use Smith's recording before games they thought were big enough to need good luck.

Eventually, they invited her to sign it live at The Spectrum. She had never attended a hockey game before, but she loved it, even the fact that "The Broad Street Bullies" did a lot of fighting. They were 36-3-1 before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, on May 19, 1974. The Flyers had the chance to wrap the Cup up against the Boston Bruins that day, and didn't want to go back to the Boston Garden for a Game 7, so they invited their good luck charm Smith, by then 67 years old and 30 years past her peak, to sing it live, and she did.

The ovation was huge. To counteract her good luck, the Bruins' 2 best players, Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, skated over to her, and gave her a big bouquet of flowers. It was a nice gesture, but it didn't work: A goal by Rick MaLeish at 14:48 of the 1st period held up, and the Flyers won, 1-0.

Kate Smith made her final public performance on May 23, 1985, before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals, when the Flyers lost to the Edmonton Oilers, and lost the series in 5 games. She died the next year, at the age of 79. The year after that, the team erected a statue of her outside The Spectrum. On one side was a plaque telling her life story; on the other, a plaque with the lyrics of "God Bless America."

When the Flyers and the NBA's 76ers moved from The Spectrum to what's now named the Wells Fargo Center in 1996, the Smith statue, the Dornhoefer goal statue, and a statue of 76ers legend Julius "Dr. J" Erving were moved to the new arena. A statue of Clarke and Parent holding the Cup is also now outside the new arena, as is one of earlier Philadelphia basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.

The Smith statue was covered and then removed in April 2019, due to criticism of lyrics in some of Smith's earlier songs that were perceived as racist. This may have been unfair, as some of those songs had also been sung by black singers. Smith's recording of "God Bless America" has not been played before Flyers home games since. The Flyers' record in such games is 100 wins, 29 losses and 5 ties, for a winning percentage of .765.

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April 5, 1939 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that the Library of Congress opened its annex building, now named the John Adams Building. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the Stanley Cup Playoffs were between the Semifinals and the Finals. So there were no scores on this historic day. The Boston Bruins went on to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Cup.