He had been convinced to complete this project by his perception of the previous success of Bob Curnow's arrangement of God Save the Queen played on two tours of the United Kingdom in late 1963 and an altered version earlier in 1972.

Curnow had worked on the charts in batches during the spring of 1972 and delivered them while the band was out on the road.

Many agree that so much talent, enthusiasm and money would have been better spent on more promising jazz material than national anthems.

[3] While there were many favorable replies, some were quite surprisingly negative to the extent the government of China bitterly resented their anthem featured on the same LP as arch-enemy Taiwan.

[3] Kenton himself would later lament, "The National Anthems album Bob wrote was great, though commercially it died---it was a terrible failure.