Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!
George F. Root
George Frederick Root was born at Sheffield, Massachusetts, and was named after the German-born British composer George Frideric Handel. Root left his farming community for Boston at 18, flute in hand, intending to join an orchestra. He worked for a while as a church organist in Boston, and from 1845 taught music at the New York Institute for the Blind, where he met Fanny Crosby, with whom he would compose fifty to sixty popular secular songs.
Root wrote one song that has endured for 150 years and was written during the Civil War and became a popular song among Union troops. The original name of the song was
Battle Cry of Freedom but over the years it's come to be known as
Rally 'Round the Flag Boys. Ry Cooder did a beautiful interpretation of
Rally 'Round the Flag Boys for his soundtrack to The Long Riders, a movie about Jesse James.