WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN
“When the Saints Go Marching In,” so well-known that it is often referred to as “The
Saints,” is a United States gospel hymn that has taken on certain aspects of folk music.
Though it originated as a spiritual, today people are more likely to hear it played by a jazz
band. A traditional use of the song is as a funeral march. In the funeral music tradition of
New Orleans, Louisiana, often called the “jazz funeral,” while accompanying the coffin
to the cemetery, a band would play the tune as a dirge. On the way back from the
interment, it would switch to the familiar upbeat “hot” or “Dixieland” style.
While the tune is still heard as a slow spiritual number on rare occasions, from the mid-
20th century it has been massively more common as a “hot” number. The number remains
particularly associated with the city of New Orleans, to the extent that New Orleans’
professional football team was named the New Orleans Saints, after the song. Both vocal
and instrumental renditions of the song abound. Louis Armstrong was one of the first to
make the tune into a nationally known pop-tune in the 1930s. Armstrong wrote that his
sister told him she thought the secular performance style of the traditional church tune
was inappropriate and irreligious. However, Armstrong was in a New Orleans tradition of
turning church numbers into brass band and dance numbers that went back at least to
Buddy Bolden‘s band at the very start of the 20th century. The tune was brought into the
early rock and roll repertory by Fats Domino and (as “The Saint’s Rock and Roll”) by Bill
Haley & His Comets.
We are traveling in the footsteps
Of those who’ve gone before
But we’ll all be reunited (But if we stand reunited)
On a new and sunlit shore (Then a new world is in store)
Oh when the Saints go marching in
When the Saints go marching in
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in
And when the sun refuse (begins) to shine
And when the sun refuse (begins) to shine
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in
When the moon turns red with blood
When the moon turns red with blood
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in
On that hallelujah day
On that hallelujah day
Oh Lord I want to be in that number