KATE SMITH AND GOD BLESS AMERICA

It was 1938, and Kate Smith was in the market for a new brand.

She was several years into her singing career — a career that would span five decades and earn her a Presidential Medal of Freedom — and Smith’s manager, Ted Collins, wanted to change up her image. She was going to be wholesome, the girl next door. All-American.

So when they approached the composer Irving Berlin, in need of a new patriotic gem for Smith to perform on Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) in 1938, he had just the thing: an old tune, written and stashed away during his Army days 20 years earlier.

But “God Bless America” will surely survive, with a staying power that derives from the various meanings it has taken on for different people in different eras.

Early on, it was a lofty monument of patriotism as the United States climbed out of the Depression and then lurched into war. Seventy years later, it became a symbol of unity after the Sept. 11 attacks. Along the way, it has been performed by countless vocalists, bands and classrooms of schoolchildren, and spun off millions in royalties for two of Berlin’s favorite organizations, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

The song was written at an Army camp in the Long Island hamlet of Yaphank, which some years later would become home to a community of German-Americans who supported the Nazis. Berlin was writing “Yip, Yip, Yaphank,” a soldier-centric musical revue that would raise $150,000 on Broadway for the camp during World War I. “God Bless America” was meant to be the comedy’s finale, but Mr. Berlin deemed it too somber for the occasion. It was shelved until Smith came knocking.

According to the book “God Bless America: The Surprising History of an Iconic Song,” by Sheryl Kaskowitz, Smith sang it on the radio nearly every week for more than two years. Berlin sold more than half a million copies of the sheet music in 1939 alone. After the United States entered World War II, she performed the song (and others) during radio marathons to raise money for war bonds...