LEWISTON – Robert Goulet is being remembered in this former mill city for mangling the lyrics to the national anthem before the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight more than 40 years ago.

Goulet, 73, died Tuesday in Los Angeles while awaiting a lung transplant.

Goulet’s May 25, 1965, performance at the Central Maine Youth Center was described as being off-key and out of synch with the organ accompaniment.

“He finally managed to slur his way through it,” fight spectator David Bernier, then a 15-year-old high school freshman, told the Lewiston Sun Journal.

Newspaper stories at the time said he sang “dawn’s early night” and “gave proof through the fight.”

Interviewed years ago by online boxing writer Barry Lindenman, Goulet only admitted his mistake on the opening line.

“Even though I had never sung the national anthem, I said OK because I wanted to see the fight,” Goulet said. “So I went and had dinner with the governor [John Reed] that night. I left the table three times to go to the porch and practice.”

“The fight lasted a minute and a half. They blamed me, and I walked out of town a bum,” he lamented.

Goulet’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wasn’t the only aspect of the fight that came into question. Referee Jersey Joe Walcott mishandled the count when Liston hit the canvas, and skeptics complained that Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, toppled his challenger with a “phantom punch.”