[78-L] The debut broadcast of God Bless America

[Michael Biel]

I don't remember seeing any notes that in May someone had posted the 
actual Kate Smith Nov 10, 1938 broadcast premiere of God Bless America, 
but now after the discussions we had on 78-L when a lacquer of the 
broadcast went up on oy vey and didn't sell for the huge amount, we can 
finally hear at least this portion of the broadcast.

Note two VERY important changes to the lyrics.  Are they in the sheet 
music?  Are they in other recordings including some of Kate's 
broadcasts?  In the introduction verse -- which she didn't sing on the 
record and most broadcasts -- there is the line "Let us all be grateful 
that we're far from there", which is referring to Europe 1938, of 
course.  The line is usually heard as "Let us all be grateful for a land 
so fair".  This is very significant.  Is there any documentation as to 
objections to this line?

The other major change is in the first two lines of the final repeat of 
the last lines.  "From the green fields of Virginia, To the cold (??) 
fields out in Nome (???)  (That's the best I can figure it out to be!!)

This is a dub, and is probably a 78 excerpt.  You will notice that the 
applause fades out before the surface noise.  That surface noise is very 
crisp, leading me to feel that the dub we are hearing has all of the 
sound we are ever going to get out of this disc.  Any loss of highs is 
either in the original recording or in the playback of that original to 
make this dub.  I do detect another set of surface noise in the early 
part of the recording, its frequency range is much reduced.

Also, notice a touch of feedback near the end, also that Kate rushes the 
end slightly and has backed away a bit too far from the microphone -- or 
else the engineer was scared and potted it down to far too early.

Here's the URL.  any comments?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rKQReqJZg&feature=related

Note that several other videos saying that they are the 1938 
introduction are, of course, the recreation from the movie "This Is The 
Army" which we now is not quite an accurate re-creation!!

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.coim