America the Beautiful

A few videos to consider on this Labor Day weekend.. even if you just catch the first minute of each. The renditions are so unique.. each uplifting in it's own way. Please let me know which version you most enjoyed. Gotta admit that I am partial to Ray :)

Here is the story behind the song from the wiki:

The words are by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem:

• The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings.
• The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 4.
• The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes Peak.

On that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July.