America's Choir

******30 YEARS AGO TODAY****** 

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, aka, America's Choir, sings Battle Hymn of the Republic

to Ronald Reagan on 1/20/81 at the Inaugural Parade.

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a hymn by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the abolitionist song "John Brown's Body". Howe's more famous lyrics were written in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It became popular during the American Civil War. Since that time it has become an extremely popular and well-known American patriotic song.

In 1960 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus for singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The 45 rpm single record, which was arranged and edited by Columbia Records and Cleveland disk jockey Bill Randle, was an unlikely commercial success and reached #13 on Billboard's Hot 100 the previous autumn.

Source:
Wikipedia