Eighty-four years ago, on March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover made “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States. Hoover’s signature on the congressional decree made official what had been unofficial for years, and other patriotic songs with huge fan bases — “My Country Tis of Thee,” “Hail Columbia,” “America, the Beautiful,” etc. — were left forever in the margins.
Marc Ferris of Greenwich wants March 3 to become a day set aside by the federal government annually to commemorate the song. He has approached U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, with a request that March 3 be declared National Anthem Day and added as a federal observance in Title 36 of the United States Code.
“If you look at that list [Title 36], you can see Pan-American Aviation Day, Leif Erickson Day, Stephen Foster Memorial Day. If we can recognize those observances, there is room for National Anthem Day,” he said. “It could be something symbolic that could be done. This is a contentious Congress. It would be nice to see they could work together to do something.”
Himes’ office has been responsive. Himes’ spokesman Greg Vadala told The Courant that Himes plans to present a proposal to Congress to officially recognize the national anthem on March 3. “At this point we’re trying to work out the legislative language,” Vadala said. He said the proposal probably would be presented too late to apply to March 3 this year, because currently Congress is preoccupied with the issue of funding Homeland Security.
Ferris said that Himes’ proposal would be a step below his ultimate goal, an annual observance under Title 36. “But it doesn’t preclude it,” Ferris said.
In the meantime, Ferris has published “Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America’s National Anthem” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 302 pp.). Ferris’ overview details the history of the anthem, from the writing of its lyrics by Francis Scott Key in 1814 to the present day. It also studies the history of the songs that were rivals for the national anthem, and the people who defended the right of “Banner” to get the honor.
“When I first came up with the idea of the book, nothing good had been written about it. It had no narrative history. I had a lot of questions,” said Ferris, a public relations professional and former journalist. “Why did it take 117 years from its writing to being the national anthem? Why did it happen during the Depression? It seemed like an act of contrived patriotism, but that’s not really the reason.
“Why this song? Nobody ever tells me they love the song. They can’t remember the lyrics and they can’t sing the melody. And there’s the allegedly militaristic way it sounds, and it’s about an old-fashioned war nobody remembers,” he said. “Why did they choose this song?”
Ferris’s story is comprehensive and surprisingly entertaining. Key wrote his poem in the aftermath of the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Later, his words were matched with the tune of a bawdy drinking song. Gradually, as the “Banner” became woven into the fabric of American life, it was played more often at public gatherings and military events and etiquette evolved on behavior during the performance.
Rival Songs
Over the years, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” grew in popularity, countless songwriters tried to knock it off its perch. Ferris’ book features descriptions and lyrics of some of these pretenders-to-the-throne. Some lyrics are just plain bad, some swipe phrases from Key’s poem or other popular poems and songs and some veer so far into religion that patriotism almost seems a secondary concern.
Ferris’s book respects the few songs that were legitimate rivals to “Banner.” “America, the Beautiful” was easy to sing — the tune was borrowed from a hymn — and had beautiful lyrics, however its momentum stalled when its modest lyricist, Katharine Bates, would not promote it. Children loved “My Country Tis of Thee,” but its music was identical to Britain’s anthem “God Save the King.” The 18th-century “Hail Columbia” had sentimental value, until “Banner’ became more popular. John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” had its fans, even though Sousa himself preferred “Banner.”
In his own life, Ferris hears a lot of complaints about “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “When I tell people that I wrote a history of the anthem, they almost always reply that they would prefer ‘America, the Beautiful’ to be the official song. Even my father holds that opinion,” he said. “The ‘Banner’ is unfairly maligned. Maybe the repetition has bred some contempt. No other country plays its anthem as much as we do or flies flags as much as we do.”
As he tells the story, Ferris describes well-known national anthem boosters who can be obsessive to the point of fanaticism, including an especially memorable Maryland dowager named Mrs. Holloway, an attack dog who treated the “Banner” like her own meaty bone. Ferris does not take sides. He gives them their due, as well as people such as folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose “This Land is Your Land” included a passage condemning private property, and Jimi Hendrix, whose electric-guitar “Banner” was hated by traditionalists but beloved by the Woodstock Generation.
“I tried to write a nonpartisan book, politically down the middle,” he said. “My only bias is in favor of the ‘Banner’.”
