Stories of Standards: “When the Saints Go Marching In”

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long starting Monday, April 2!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp – If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

“When the Saints Go Marching In” is a traditional gospel song which was transformed into a jazz standard, with Louis Armstrong’s 1938 recording greatly influencing the course of its history. Armstrong said he frequently heard the song when he was a child, sometimes as a somber hymn and sometimes quickly and joyfully. The Paramount Jubilee Singers recorded it as a gospel tune in 1927; Blind Willie Davis recorded it in a much more rapid style in 1928. As with any traditional song, there are many different lyrics. Most versions include “I want to be in that number/When the saints go marching in.” at the end of each verse.

Closely associated with the city of New Orleans, there were so many requests for this song that at one time a sign in Preservation Hall read “$1 for standard requests, $2 for unusual requests and $5 for the Saints.” The song is played at all New Orleans Saints games and is one of the factors in the choice of name for the football team, the others being New Orleans’ large Catholic population and the fact that the franchise was initially awarded on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1966. A 1945 recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In” by the independent record label American Music featured brass band veterans, including Bunk Johnson, and strongly suggested that jazz improvisation may well have been a result of brass band traditions.