Acid Blues (Slight Return)

Jimi Hendrix covered the national anthem on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, on August 18, 1969, the last day of Woodstock. The melody had been composed by John Stafford Smith for a London musicians club in 1776. In the years that followed, various celebratory lyrics were written to accompany it on both sides of the Atlantic before Francis Scott Key, having witnessed the end of the British navy’s daylong bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry in 1814, penned what became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Among the Americans killed that day were a Black soldier and a woman cut in two by a mortar shell as she resupplied the troops, but the next morning, when the acrid smoke cleared, the 15-star flag still flew over the fort. Key’s lyrics were printed in dozens of newspapers and became an instant patriotic hit, though not until 1931 did the song become the official national anthem.