NRR Project: 'When the Saints Go Marching In' (1938)

 

NRR Project: ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’

Traditional

Recorded by Louis Armstrong & his Orchestra

Recorded 1938

2:41

First, read Ricky Riccardi’s excellent essay on the song here. I have but little to add to it.

“When the Saints Go Marching In” was originally a hymn, sung slowly and reverently. However, in New Orleans, where Louis Armstrong grew up, the song was played with a bouncier, more upbeat rhythm as the band accompanying a funeral would play it on its way back from the cemetery. This is the version Armstrong wanted to record.

He met with resistance. In 1931, his then-label dissuaded him from recording it. Finally, under a new label, Decca, he got a chance to set it down on shellac. The recording was released timidly, but immediately became a major seller. Its infectious energy, and the jubilation behind the song is palpable. It is a joyously positive statement.

Many people didn’t feel that way about it. Sixty churches protested against a hymn being rendered in jazz style; they didn’t feel that the secular and the sacred should be mixed so. However, Armstrong loved the song and played it consistently to the end of his career.

Since then, multiple artists have made the transition from gospel to jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock, including Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and Sly Stone. Gospel music itself has become more swinging and infectious, too. It seems that the marriage of the sacred and the secular is a successful one.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: When You Wish Upon A Star.