14 Comments

I absolutely loved this version sang by the late, great Whitney Houston. I’ve had the privilege of singing the National Anthem on several occasions for the Chris Everett Pro Celebrity Charity Tennis Matches held in Delray Beach, FL and I always sing Whitneys’s version. And always a moving performance for those in attendance.

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For our great nation, and much love and blessings for her beautiful soul.

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Wow - a tremendous rendition and I was particularly struck that it was a different America at that time - proud, united; not petty and divided

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Thank you for this reminder of Whitney Houston's greatness and what the soul of our country sounds like...'calm, forceful, honest, fleeting, almost fragile, with power, intensity and majesty'!

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Thanks for sharing this Marc. Honestly, any American who can get through that without a tear (or three) in their eyes, doesn't understand the goodness that can be America. What a powerful reminder of what it was like in the early years of our country- less than 40 years old when Francis Scott Key wrote it. ❤️🇺🇸

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What a gift is right! Thank you for the beautiful reminder of that song, Whitney, and how we all felt as a country. I want that again. That was a magical moment.

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Love it! Thank you for sharing.

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Whitney Houston's renditon may be the most well-known by non-musicians, but it is hardly the "greatest-ever performance." For one thing, the piece was composed in 3/4 time, but Whitney (and many other well-known but not well-trained singers) don't have the physical skills to sing it in the original time signature, so they stretch each bar by one beat to allow them more time to breathe. There are many examples on YouTube of trained singers who have the ability to sing it as intended without compromising the integrity of the song.

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The composers on the piece are hardly untrained:

https://www.emmys.com/bios/rickey-minor

https://www.johnclaytonjazz.com

And as mentioned, she liked the feel of Marvin Gaye's 1983 NBA All-Star performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNydcwDriuU

I stand by the assertion it is the greatest ever performance DC!

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Not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or if it's just that you know little about music, but Rickey Minor and John Clayton didn't "compose" the Star Spangled Banner. It was composed by John Stafford Smith in the late 1770s. Rickey Minor was the ARRANGER of the piece, and he's a well-trained arranger. As popular as Houston's and Gaye's renditions might be with an unsophisticated populace, they are bastardizations of the original, much like writing a resume in comic book format would be....and I'm guessing that you would not vote a resume in comic book format to be the "greatest-ever" resume.

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I imagine you're a singer yourself, DC?

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No, I'm a symphony instrumentalist. I think Whitney's voice is heavenly, but that's not today's topic...;-)

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Wow. You're really not going to like my upcoming newsletter on the Beatles not reading sheet music, then!

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Haha, not at all. I grew up with the Beatles and I known for a long time that they read little to no standard notation.

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