[JPL] SSB History Questions

[Doug Crane]

If memory serves correctly, the origin of the SSB melody is from an 
old(e) English drinking song.  Which probably goes a lot towards 
explaining the extremes of the range of the tune.  Given a choice, 
I'd mothball the SSB and replace it with America the Beautiful.  It's 
a far easier to sing and it's a better melody too.  The lyrics speak 
more to what I'd like to think this country is about as well.

And I agree with you Eric that the whole Rene escapade smacks of 
racism.  But it's an election year so you gotta work those attacks in 
where and when you can.  (Now if only we could find a picture of Rene 
Marie standing next to Rev. Jeremiah Wright!)

Politically this whole week has been a sideshow.  Between the flak 
over Rene Marie and the parsing of words over what Wes Clark said on 
Face the Nation about being a pilot during the Viet Nam war not 
necessarily qualifying one to be president, there was little or no 
coverage about Seymour Hersh's truly alarming New Yorker article 
about the covert ops the Bushies are conducting as we speak in 
Iran.  That's where the focus should be, not on these other marginal 
sorts of things that are merely attempts to divide and 
conquer.  Swift Boat veterans anyone?  Willie Horton?  John McCain 
being the father of a black baby?  (Actually Bangladeshi, not 
black.  But that didn't stop Bush surrogates in 2000 from using it 
against McCain in South Carolina!  And it worked!)

Doug Crane
KUVO Denver 89.3 FM
dcrane at comcast.net

At 04:08 PM 7/4/2008, you wrote:

>Reading Lenore's remarks made me start thinking about some things.
>
>Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, right? The melody is an old 
>English melody, I think.
>
>Who wrote the harmony? And when was it written? And what instrument 
>did the writer have in mind?
>
>It seems to me that I remember that the piano, as we know it, is 
>about the same age as the U.S. is. I also think I remember that the 
>first piano concert in America took place on Tremont Street in 
>Boston in the mid 1800s.
>
>If this is true, were the chords written for an instrument that was 
>not capable of playing chords that are as extended as a piano can 
>play? Are the chords played today on the piano that simplistic or at 
>some point did someone extend the chords for piano accompaniment?
>
>Eric Jackson
>Mon - Thurs 8 pm - mid.
>89.7 FM WGBH Boston
>www.wgbh.org/jazz