Sacramento's Raley Field
Jack Cramer gets to sing The National Anthem
(Tuesday April 28, 2009)
Former Grass Valley classmate, Jack Cramer had a nearly 200-year-old story to tell, and thousands of minor league baseball fans heard him sing it just before noon Tuesday at Sacramento's Raley Field. He sang our national Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner" just before the Sacramento River Cats took on the Las Vegas 51s.
Jack answered an advertisement in February for singers to audition for the honor of singing the national anthem. He showed up, belted the song for a group of River Cats personnel, and was given a date.
Anyone who has attended the Fourth of July parades, or the recent dedication of Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital at its 50th anniversary in December, knows that Jack (at right) never misses the opportunity to sing the national anthem. It's his chance to reveal in song a message that many people miss. "I try to tell the story of what went on at Fort McHenry. I try to emphasize and try to get the story across as I sing. This song, to me, is more dramatic. It's talking about history and what it means."
The Star-Spangled Banner lyrics come from a poem written in 1814 by 35-year-old amateur poet Francis Scott Key who wrote "Defense of Fort McHenry" after seeing the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the battle of Baltimore, Maryland, by Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. It had been a particularly nasty conflict with the British burning down the Capitol and White House in Washington, and set out to take the port of Baltimore, which was partly protected by Fort McHenry. After an initial land attack was thwarted 16 ships of the British fleet positioned themselves for a massive attack on the fort. Before the fleet came within canon range, Colonel John Skinner and lawyer-poet Francis Scott Key had gone out to one of the British ships hoping to negotiate the release of Dr. William Beanes, a friend of Key who was captured following the attack on Washington. The British agreed, but they figured the three knew too much about the plans to attack, so they were detained by the British to remain on the frigate Surprise until it was over. The attack started on September 12th, 1814 and continued for the next two days.
The three men watched much of the bombardment from the deck and through the nights of the 12th and 13th they caught glimpses of the star-shaped fort with its huge 42ft long flag with 8 red stripes, 7 white stripes and 15 white stars. It had been specially commissioned to be large enough that the British could see it from a distance. In the dark night of the 13th, the shelling suddenly ended, but in the darkness they couldn't tell whether the British forces had been defeated, or the fort had fallen. Just before dawn Key was anxious to see if the flag they had seen the night before was still flying. It was, so he scribbled on the back of an envelope the first lines of a poem he called Defense of Fort M'Henry. Later, on the way back to shore, and in his hotel room, he completed all four verses of the poem. The following morning he took it to his brother-in-law, a local judge, who thought it was so good that he had it printed as a handbill.
The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith in 1771 and used as the constitutional song of the Anacreonic Society (or "Anacreon in Heaven") set to various lyrics already popular in the United States. It was eventually set to Key's poem and renamed "The Star Spangled Banner," and soon became a well known American patriotic song. The range of 1 1/2 octaves made it more difficult to sing. Although it has four stanzas, only the first is the most popular today, with the fourth ("O thus be it ever when free men shall stand...") added on more formal occasions. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was finally made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 which was signed by President Herbert Hoover. Allegedly, one of the original copies that Key wrote was sold to the Maryland Historical Society for $26,400 in 1953, and the actual flag (above right) that he saw is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.
At left is one of two surviving copies of the 1814 broadside printing of the "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem that later became the lyrics of national anthem of the United States.
As The Union newspaper Staff Writer David Mirhadi put it, "Cramer grew up listening to the crooners popular of a different era...men and women who were simply recognizable for their unmistakable voices that needed no other introduction. Sinatra. Como. Crosby. Garland."
Jack Cramer did it. He sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" outside, a cappella. One man and a microphone. Earlier he had commented that the high notes on some of the lyrics..."for the land of the free"...aren't as tricky as "Oh, say, can you see" on the lower register...If you say you're not nervous singing the song, you're lying. The Star-Spangled Banner is 2 1/2 minutes of doing something I've enjoyed all of my life."
And how did everything turn out? Rumor has it that Jack got lots of good comments, and even the staff (who are there every day) said it was the best they'd ever heard. (We're listening to Josh Grobin's rendition). And how about the game? The Sacramento River Cats beat the Las Vegas 51s 3-2. Looks like it was an exciting game.
