Oh Say, Can You Sing It?

By MARGARET CARLSON

Just before Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston fought for the heavyweight boxing crown in 1965, baritone Robert Goulet lost his preliminary bout with The Star- Spangled Banner. He made it flawlessly through the first several lines before losing his grip on the lyrics. He later blamed his Canadian upbringing for having to hum the remainder before thousands of fight fans and a closed- circuit television audience.

Though it is blared, crooned, strummed, tooted and mumbled thousands of times a year, The Star-Spangled Banner is a song almost no one gets exactly right. A few musicians, historians and public officials would like to replace it. Indiana Congressman Andrew Jacobs has reintroduced a bill that would change the national anthem to the more easily warbled America, the Beautiful.

Critics deride the Banner's lyrics, written by Francis Scott Key after the British assault on Baltimore in 1814, as difficult to memorize, warmongering, and insulting to America's staunchest ally. They also claim that the music is derived from a drinking song popularized at London's Crown and Anchor Tavern. The tune's highs and lows are, well, too high and low. Bass-baritone George London contends the Banner is "impossible to sing if you're sober." Opera singers have the best chance to cover the octave plus a fifth. But the soprano who starts a half-note too high will shatter glass and her hopes of auditioning for the Met by the time she gets to the "land of the free." She can forget getting deep enough for the "twilight's last gleaming."

Not many Americans agree with the critics: 53% of those polled by TIME/CNN last week feel the anthem is easy to sing; only 28% think it should be replaced by America, the Beautiful; 64% claim to know all the words.

The anthem runs deep in American life, a fixture wherever fireworks explode or a ball is tossed. Although Congress did not make the Banner the nation's official anthem until 1931, the military began playing it at ceremonies as far back as 1898. It made its major league baseball debut in Chicago during the 1918 World Series, when the band struck it up for no apparent reason and Babe Ruth and the crowd stood at attention. Now it is played before everything from Pee Wee hockey to the Super Bowl.

To put audiences out of their pregame misery many stadiums resort to canned versions of error-free performances by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Robert Merrill (called the "Star-Spangled Baritone" for his ubiquity on the anthem- singing circuit) and the Johnny Mann Singers. But a taped version takes away the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat inherent in every live performance, as well as the singers' inalienable right to get it wrong. Country-and-western star Johnny Paycheck, crooning before Atlanta Falcons fans, faked his way through several lines: "Oh, say can you see, it's cloudy at night/ What so loudly we sang as the daylight's last cleaning." An immigrant Hungarian opera singer performing at a benefit showed Yankee ingenuity when he drew on the cliches of his adopted land, belting out, "Bombs bursting in air, George Washington was there." A former Miss Bloomington, Minn., blew her chance to break into the big time when she sang the anthem before a Minnesota Twins game. By the time she got to the "land of the free," she was in the land of the hopelessly confused. "Aw, nuts," she muttered into the microphone, and gave up.

Live performances also provide the chance to make musical history. Singer Jose Feliciano ensured his place in the anthem hall of fame after his bluesy Latin interpretation at the 1968 World Series in Detroit, ending the song with "Oh, yeah." RCA Records pressed a single of it the next day. After that, performers strained to put their personal stamp on the anthem: Lou Rawls (languorous jazz), Aretha Franklin (Motown), Al Hirt (Dixieland) and Frank Sinatra (moody lounge lizard). The prize for the most ear-bending version goes to Jimi Hendrix's screeching finale at Woodstock.

Molto allegro is the desired pace for most performances, to cut down on fan fidgeting and player awkwardness, especially if the game is televised. In 1977 Fenway Park organist John Kiley became an anthem legend for coming in at a snappy 51 seconds. That is still not fast enough for ABC Sports. "The goal," says former producer Dorrance Smith, "is to cut away to a commercial." Luckily, he was not broadcasting the 1978 World Series in Yankee Stadium when Pearl Bailey dragged out the song to a record-breaking 2:28.

Like democracy, the Banner looks best when compared with its alternatives. "Amber waves of grain" may be more peaceable than "bombs bursting in air," but America, the Beautiful lacks drama. My Country 'Tis of Thee was stolen, note for note, from the British national anthem, God Save the Queen. And God Bless America has obvious problems with the separation of church and state, but it has de facto status as the anthem of the Philadelphia Flyers, who won the Stanley Cup in 1974 after Kate Smith inspired them with the ode to the land that she loved. Still trotted out for big games courtesy of videotape, the late Kate has compiled an enviable lifetime (and thereafter) record with the Flyers of 58 wins, 12 losses, 3 ties.

If winning were everything, God Bless America might carry the day. Anyone can belt out a respectable version. America, the Beautiful is not much challenge either. But Americans have been gamely trying to master The Star- Spangled Banner without quite overcoming it for 175 years. In a world that changes every day, that's worth more than lovable lyrics and a manageable melody.