A new book, Kick It: The Definitive Football Mixtape, explores Southampton FC history through song. Its author, Paul Brand, gives a preview.
It’s probably best not to think about it too deeply. It’s just a song. A call to arms. A tribal anthem. And Southampton FC have had to fight off a long list of interlopers to claim it as their own – St Mirren and St Johnstone singing it north of the border, fair enough, but “Oh when the Spurs…” and the rainbow of colours (Liverpool – reds, Fulham – whites, Oldham – blues etc) can jog on.
A new book on the fertile intersection between football and music credits Southampton as the spiritual owners of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, but it also dredges up some fairly grim associations.
No one knows who exactly wrote it originally. The publishing rights are contested, with musicians scrapping to get their grubby mitts on it just as football supporters do.
It is believed to have started in the Bahamas in the early-19th century before migrating to American plantations. Saints fans think watching Bednarek playing out from the back can be painful but at least their chanting isn’t a soundtrack to slavery and oppression.
The African-American spiritual was then part of the 1920s jazz explosion, with the Reverend George W. Harvey decrying Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong’s recording as “sacrilegious desecration” and “a disgrace to the whole race”.
However, the swinging sounds of Prohibition speakeasies didn’t reach these shores until wartime, when American GIs positioned in port cities such as Southampton first brought jazz to the attention of the wider British public. And Armstrong (Louis, not Stuart or Adam) didn’t tour here until the 1950s.
That’s when it’s first believed to have entered the Dell, with some clever clogs in the Milton Road end finally making the link between song and the Saints nickname that derived from Southampton’s foundations as St Mary’s Church of England Young Men’s Association FC.
Beating the pop boom of the ’60s, the Southampton supporters association had already commissioned local musician Monty Warlock to rework Bing Crosby standard ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’, which had been written during the First World War when lyricist Douglas Furber (famous for ‘The Lambeth Walk’) met up with Australian composer A. Emmett Adams in front of the church spires.
This “official” anthem was quickly usurped by the unofficial march, the tempo of which was perhaps better suited to sporting action. Indeed, just as the funeral rituals of New Orleans would see the jazz accompaniment rise from an elegiac pace to a more festive one as mourners moved from ceremony to wake, the stadium version can quickly go from a mournful 70 bpm to an excitable 140 bpm, representing either elation or defiance. The call and response adaptation also speaks to the camaraderie inherent in being a Saints follower.
However, if you thought ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ was a rousing call to arms then you obviously skipped Bible school.
The song is essentially a re-telling of the Book of Revelation and the apocalyptic Last Judgment, only – as with other club anthems such as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ – fans omit all but one small part. ‘Oh, when the drums begin to bang’ might also work on the terraces, but supporters are best spared ‘when the stars fall from the sky’, ‘when the moon turns red with blood’ and ‘when the horsemen begin to ride’.
The saints marching in is not the depiction of a victory parade but a metaphor for the end of days, better suited to relegation than a morale-boosting advance. No wonder then that it belongs here on the South Coast rather than in a rival port city like Liverpool…
Kick It! The Definitive Football Mixtape is available from book stores and direct from the publisher: halcyonpublishing.co.uk/products/pre-order-kick-it-the-definitive-football-mixtape
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