America the Beautiful—Ray Charles
#365Songs: Aug 3
I went to a songwriter’s conference once.
I say once, because I’ve only ever done such a thing once. It was in Durango, CO.
One the one hand, it was a positive experience. It’s where I met my brother-from-another-mother Colin Brooks.
It’s also where I had an A&R exec tell me I sounded like I was trying to write a Townes Van Zandt song, and then told me that I was “no Townes Van Zandt.”
So, you know, got one, lost one.
It’s also where I got a lesson in songwriting from Al Anderson.
Don’t recognize that name? Neither did I.
But he was the guitar player in NRBQ, which actually didn’t mean that much to me either.
As it turns out, of course, he’s a master songwriter and a highly revered guitarist.
And that day, he played a simple I-IV-V chord progression the way a country or folk player would play it.
And then he played it the way Ray Charles would treat it; with all the lovely passing chords, and all the jazz, blues, soul, and gospel touches. And he explained that whenever he was writing songs, he would just try to think about how Ray Charles would do it, and then he’d go that route.
And so, because I was watching magic happen right before my eyes, I vowed then and there that when I got back home from the conference, I would put myself through Ray Charles school.
And I did.
I listened to nothing but Ray Charles for weeks. But I knew after the first 5 minutes that I’d never be able to do anything like what Ray did.
I’ve been pretty hard on the ol’ red, white, and blue the past couple days. So I thought I’d pivot a bit today and listen to one of the most beautiful patriotic songs our country has ever inspired: “America the Beautiful.”
Interestingly enough, the song has a Colorado connection. The original lyrics were composed, in part, atop Pike’s Peak. They began as a poem, written by Katharine Lee Bates. She continued to work on the piece back in town, at the Antlers Hotel.
The Ray Charles version that I’ve included here starts with the third verse of the song:
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
This verse was quite different in the original poem:
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once or twice, for man’s avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America, America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!
After concluding his opening verse, Charles hollers out: “And you know when I was in school, we’d just sing it something like this, listen here!”
And he then delivers the traditional opening verse:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
This version, codified in 1911, would go on to be to considered as a candidate for the United States national anthem. In 1927, it was very nearly nominated as such. And yet, it wasn’t.
Instead, in 1930, the Veterans of Foreign Wars mounted their campaign to get “The Star-Spangled Banner” recognized as the official anthem. On March 4, 1931, it was made official. By Herbert Hoover.
So, instead of the gorgeous masterpiece of a song that is “America the Beautiful,” we have a miserable, violent piece of crap nominated by a bunch of former soldiers and signed into existence by a man described by W.E.B DuBois as an “undemocratic racist who saw blacks as a species of ‘sub-men,’” and who is probably most infamously remembered for having shanty towns named after him during the Great Depression.
Charles recorded the song for an album released in 1972 called A Message from the People. Often considered a “protest album” of a kind, it was certainly Charles being uncharacteristically political.
Patrick Kinsley, writing in Northwest Review, does a lovely job of capturing what Charles achieved with this release:
A Message from the People would focus on issues, as Charles recalled, “that you might call a little militant, saying some of the wrong things that were happening in the country.” It certainly achieves that end on tracks like Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All”. The urgency palpable in his voice, Brother Ray menaces, over a slow, steady stomp, “Heaven help the Black man if he struggles one more day/ Heaven help the White man if he turns his back away/ Heaven help the man who kicks the man who has to crawl/ Heaven help us all.” But it’s not all darkness: the opener “Lift Every Voice and Sing” turns the Black National Anthem into a syncopated jubilee.
Unfortunately, the legacy would be tainted. Ray famously—or infamously, depending on your stance—performed “America the Beautiful” at the 1984 Republican convention that nominated Ronald Reagan for re-election.
There was an odd sort of indirect precedent for this. In 1952, Reagan delivered the commencement address at William Woods College, a school originally founded to educate young girls who were orphaned by the Civil War. His speech was entitled “America the Beautiful.”
The final words of the speech concluded with these lines:
“We need you, we need your youthful honesty, we need your courage, we need your sweetness, and with your help I am sure we can come much closer to realizing that this land of ours is the last best hope of man on earth. God bless you!”
When Reagan accepted that nomination in 1984, he told a story in his speech about how people would sing “America the Beautiful” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” when the Olympic torch passed through their town. Here’s the excerpt from the transcript of that speech:
In Richardson, Texas, it was carried by a 14-year-old boy in a special wheelchair. In West Virginia the runner came across a line of deaf children and let each one pass the torch for a few feet, and at the end these youngsters’ hands talked excitedly in their sign language. Crowds spontaneously began singing “America the Beautiful” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
And then, in San Francisco a Vietnamese immigrant, his little son held on his shoulders, dodged photographers and policemen to cheer a 19-year-old black man pushing an 88-year-old white woman in a wheelchair as she carried the torch. My friends, that’s America.
Audience. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
If you’re not familiar with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” it starts off a little something like this:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
That’s the first verse. Here’s the last one:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
While God is marching on.
That’s about the most American sentiment I can think of. Let us die to make men free.
Except, that’s not the only America. There’s this one as well:
O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America, America!
God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
If you’re not familiar, it’s the original first verse of “America the Beautiful.” And, it’s beautiful.
~
Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!
