Music: Squeakless Anthem

Vincent Lopez, solemn, rotund dance-band maestro, has always been the soul of patriotism. For years he began or ended each night-club dance program with The Star-Spangled Banner, inviting his starched & spangled customers to clear their throats and sing. Nobody knew the words, and only a few sang; it usually sounded terrible. Finally, sensitive night-club owners asked him not to play it any more.

This worried Patriot Lopez, and he decided then & there that something must be done to make the national anthem more singable. Crux of the problem was to reduce its twelve-note range to something more like the average popular tune’s eight notes. Originally designed to show off lusty tenors and rumbling bassos,* the tune’s high & low notes squeaked and croaked when essayed by snack-fed debutantes and their escorts’ whiskey tenors.

Result of Lopez’ melodic pruning was heard last week when Baritone Bill Scott soloed a revised version in Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre. The audience stood up, applauded mildly, but failed to sing.

Lopez’ crusade had the enthusiastic support of D. A. R. President-General Mrs. William A. Becker. But Mrs. Reuben Ross Holloway, prominent anti-nudist, who helped to make the Star-Spangled Banner the official as well as actual national anthem, was scandalized, threatened to picket the theatre.

* 0nly the words of the Star-Spangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key. The tune had its origin in 18th-Century England as the gusty club song of London’s Anacreontic Society, is believed to have been written by one John Stafford Smith, the society’s organist. The original words:

To Anacreon in Heav’n, where he sat in full

glee,

A few sons of harmony sent a petition, That he their inspirer and patron would be, When this answer arriv’d from the jolly old Grecian

“Voice, Fiddle and Flute, No longer be mute!

I lend ye my name, and inspire ye to boot. And besides I’ll instruct ye, like me, to intwine The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’ wine.”