The Glorious Fourth

Louis Armstrong and George M. Cohan may not actually have been born on the Fourth of July, but, as the newspaper editor in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" dictated, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

It is true, however, that on the Fourth of July, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two former US Presidents--John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--shuffled off this mortal coil.

This is the day to sing:

"I'm a Yankee Doodle dandy,
Yankee Doodle, do or die,
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam,
Born on the Fourth of July."

But the song we've been thinking of is the one Henry Gibson, playing a kind of Hank Snow character, sings at the beginning of Robert Altman's "Nashville," set in 1976, the United States' bicentennial:

"We must be doin' something right,
 To last two hundred years."

A Glorious Fourth to all, and especially descendants of Bad Axe, Michigan.