Woody Guthrie in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie made his first recordings—several hours of conversation and songs recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress—as well as an album, "Dust Bowl Ballads," for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey. In February 1940 he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", as a response to what he felt was an overplaying of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on the radio. Guthrie thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. He adapted the melody from an old gospel song, "Oh My Loving Brother", which had been adapted by the country
God Bless America before Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals on May 19, 1974, and the Flyers won the Cup that day. "God Bless America" was the official campaign song for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940, as well as his Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie. At that time, the song represented cultural and religious tolerance. During a live television broadcast on the evening of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, following addresses by then House and Senate leaders, Speaker Dennis Hastert (Republican) and Tom Daschle (Democrat), members of the United States Congress broke out into an apparently spontaneous verse of "God