A Song America Had Never Heard: 'God Bless America' Debuts

On November 11, 1938, America heard a song it had never heard before — and would never forget.

That night, radio star Kate Smith introduced "God Bless America" on her CBS program, The Kate Smith Hour. The date was Armistice Day, the 20th anniversary of the end of World War I, and with war clouds gathering over Europe, Smith told her listeners she wanted to do something special — something that would honor veterans and remind Americans what their country meant to them.

The song came from Irving Berlin, the Russian-born Jewish immigrant who had written some of America's best-loved tunes. Berlin had actually composed it twenty years earlier, in 1918, while serving in the Army and writing a military revue called Yip Yip Yaphank. He set it aside as not quite right for the show — and it sat in a file drawer for two decades.

In 1938, with Hitler on the rise, Berlin dusted it off, tinkered with the words for the new era, and wrote a rarely heard introductory verse — "While the storm clouds gather far across the sea" — that Smith always sang. He gave the song to Smith, whose powerful voice and warm presence made her one of radio's biggest stars. Her performance that November night was an instant sensation: phones rang at Berlin's publishing office with callers asking for "that new song Kate Smith just sang," and Berlin himself rushed to the studio for the West Coast repeat of the broadcast.

Smith sang it every week on her show. She recorded it for Victor in March 1939, and it became her signature song. Both political parties adopted it as their 1940 convention theme. As America entered World War II, "God Bless America" became the song the nation associated with the war — a prayer for the country, sung by its sweetheart.

It all began on Armistice Day 1938, with one singer, one microphone, and a song twenty years in the making.

Berlin had arrived in America from Russia as a five-year-old, and few songwriters understood the country better. The earliest 'final' manuscript of the revised song was dated November 2 — just nine days before Smith sang it on the air. After that night, there was no going back: the song belonged to the nation. Today it closes ballgames and opens ceremonies, a prayer America learned by heart.

Photo: National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).