Stars And Stripes Forever: A Song History

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John Philip Sousa, born in Washington, D.C., in 1854, led the U.S. Marine Band from 1880 until July 1892, when he resigned at the urging of the manager David Blakely to start a civilian band of his own.[1] He traced "The Stars and Stripes Forever" to homesickness on the voyage back from a European trip, saying the tune kept returning to him as he paced the decks of the liner Teutonic, and he dated the writing to Christmas Day, 1896.[2] The Sousa scholar Paul E. Bierley, in an essay the Marine Band reprints with its edition of the score, thinks it was probably written out in Sousa's New York hotel suite soon after the ship docked, and he offers two possible sources for the title: the bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore's favorite toast, and an earlier piece of the same name printed by one of Sousa's publishers.[2]

Color print of a large American flag with red and white stripes and a field of stars waving from a flagpole

William S. Kimball & Co., United States, from the National Flags series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. The American flag on a card printed in 1891, six years before the march; the card has no connection to Sousa.

The march was introduced in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897; by Bierley's account it was received only a little more warmly than the usual new Sousa march at first, and it caught on gradually, gaining ground when the Spanish-American War created a demand for patriotic music.[2] Sousa later wrote words for it, evidently for his 1898 pageant The Trooping of the Colors, and he said the three melodies of the final trio stood for the North, the South and the West.[2] Listeners at Sousa Band concerts took to standing for it as if for a national anthem, and Britannica notes that Sousa and his band played it at most of their concerts from its publication until his death in 1932.[2][3] Among the early discs of it by Sousa's Band, conducted by Arthur Pryor, were a June 1899 New York take for Berliner that was never issued, an April 1900 Philadelphia recording issued as Berliner 0228, and Victor 306, which followed sessions that began in Camden, New Jersey, in April 1901.[4][5]

Bierley calls it the most popular march ever written, and he notes that its publisher had so little confidence in it that dropping "Forever" from the title was suggested.[2] A law of December 11, 1987, made it the national march of the United States, a status now written into Title 36 of the U.S. Code.[6][1] Sousa's march also turns up, in a DAD-tuning arrangement, among the 15 pieces in Shelley Stevens's Baker's Dozen #13: Patriotic Tunes, a Fingers Of Steel mountain dulcimer book that mixes patriotic standards with military service songs and calls for no capo.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Stars And Stripes Forever"

Sources

  1. "The President's Own" United States Marine Band: "John Philip Sousa".
  2. "The President's Own" United States Marine Band: "The Complete Marches of John Philip Sousa: The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896), Full Score" (program note by Paul E. Bierley).
  3. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The Stars and Stripes Forever".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Berliner matrix 0228. The stars and stripes forever / Sousa's Band".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix [Pre-matrix B-]306. Stars and stripes forever / Sousa's Band".
  6. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: "36 U.S. Code § 304 - National march".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #13: Patriotic Tunes".
  8. Image: William S. Kimball & Co., United States, from the National Flags series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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