A National Anthem Rendition We Can All Proudly Hail

Lesley Cruz will sing the national anthem before a Dodger Stadium baseball game tonight. She is 21 and a corporal in the U.S. Army.

It isn’t normally noteworthy that an anthem is being sung. Somebody is warbling one somewhere in America hundreds of times every day.

A few weeks ago, though, a guy from Cruz’s hometown paper in Los Angeles wrote about the anthems that are being “performed,” rather than sung properly. Artists are so busy showing off, they forget which song they’re there to sing.

Case in point:

A recording star, Montell Jordan, was invited to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Game 2 of the basketball championship series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Indiana Pacers. And perform it he did.

After getting to “. . . the land of the free,” Jordan undid his jacket, tore it off and flung it to the Staples Center’s floor.

Underneath he wore a uniform of the Lakers’ flashy player, Kobe Bryant.

And the crowd went wild, as they say.

”. . . and the home of the brave!” Jordan sang.

It was witty. It was effective.

But it was also our national anthem, not a Laker fight song.

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There is no need to go ballistic about any of this. The late Marvin Gaye’s soulful version of the anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game in Inglewood was unique in its day, and unforgettable for those of us who were there.

Unfortunately, singers since Gaye have been getting carried away.

Lt. Col. Collin A. Agee let it be known through the grapevine that there is someone in the Army who not only can sing up a storm, but also can do a number with the grace befitting a special occasion. That person is Cpl. Cruz, who will be giving something of a command performance tonight.

“You can’t be an American without being impressed by this young patriot and her rendition,” said the colonel, who sent a cassette as proof.

In observance of its 225th birthday today, the U.S. Army is having 53 cake-cutting ceremonies in the L.A. area, then sending a huge contingent to the baseball game.

It is not the Army’s intention to advise civilians how to sing. And nobody needs to coach Cpl. Cruz either. At her audition for a seven-month world tour of the service’s 1999 variety show, she sang in half-English, half-Spanish, dazzled judges with Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” then closed with a little Ricky Martin salsa that was not just medium hot, but spicy.

“Salsa is very sensual,” Cruz says, “and one of the judges was a general’s wife. I was worried that it might be a little too much.”

She was chosen for the tour, though, making her father proud.

Ricardo Cruz made music all his life. He worked as an upholsterer but played the church organ and five other instruments. Lesley sang with his accompaniment at social gatherings from the time she was 6.

Upon enlisting in 1997, she put her musical ambitions on hold. There were karaoke nights on the base at Ft. Bliss, which were fun, but when Cruz first heard of the traveling U.S. Soldier Show, she says, “I realized that the Army needed me to be a soldier first before I could be a singer.”

She got orders to South Korea. There she spent more than a year as an air defender, specializing in missile operations and maintenance.

By chance one day, a taxi dropped her in front of a Korean recording studio. Cruz on a whim went in and introduced herself. To her amazement, having been unable to afford cutting a demo in L.A., she ended up recording 32 songs.

Her aptly named younger sister Melody designed a cover, then presented the songs to their father as a surprise.

“My father’s reaction was, ‘OK, what’s that girl really doing? She’s not really in the Army, is she?’ ” the corporal recalls.

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Feeling more confident, Cruz sent off an application for the soldier show--”I threw a little holy water on the envelope”--made the final cut of 25, flew to Virginia for the auditions and was chosen.

The tour hit 48 states, Canada, her father’s native Mexico, even Korea. Her family caught the act at UCLA. “My dad told me he was mesmerized,” she says.

During the tour’s last days, Cruz’s father was killed in a West Covina traffic accident. It occurred Nov. 11 of last year--Veterans Day.

So he won’t be there to hear her anthem, her happy birthday to the Army. But she will sing it as it should be sung, and just in time for Father’s Day.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to: Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com