July is a time for patriotism in the United States, and much very good music has been written for the occasion, from John Philip Sousa through Aaron Copland to Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys and beyond. People across the political and social spectrum have written music to express their love for this nation. I didn’t grow up in a particularly patriotic family, however. Sure, we’d go to the fireworks show every other year or so, but most of the time we stayed home and watched whatever was on television or listened to the radio. The old movie Stars and Stripes Forever, with Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, and Debra Paget is the film I remember—more for the obvious charms of Ms. Paget than for the patriotic themes, I’m afraid. For whatever reason, John Philip Sousa never quite struck a chord in me. But George M. Cohan is another story. Not the Jimmy Cagney version from the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, which is terrific, but the actual Cohan who gave us all those great songs that celebrate America as a land of dreams to be realized and opportunities to be seized, a country whose optimism was not something to be trifled

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