Quote of the Day (Timmy Fisher, on the ‘Rich History’ of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’)

“If you played a musical instrument as a child, it's likely that you learnt ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ The melody is a gift for beginners: cheery, repetitive, largely stepwise. The words, meanwhile, are easy to adapt, making it a favourite for group singalongs. You'll hear it passed around campfires or belted from football terraces. Indeed, few songs in the western world are better known — a fact recognised by the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 when it was awarded ‘Towering Song’ status for having ‘influenced our culture in a unique way over many years.’ But, unlike ‘Happy Birthday to You’, ‘Over the Rainbow’ or any of the other 19 songs recognised in this way, ‘When the Saints’ has no standard version and no known composer—just a rich history of transformation.”—Music critic, editor, and podcaster Timmy Fisher, “The Life of a Song: ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’” The Financial Times, May 18-19, 2024

Fisher traces this classic American song past the jazz rendition that Louis Armstrong popularized, even beyond its first recording in 1923 by the New York gospel group, the Paramount Jubilee Singers, back to—if you can believe it—the plainchant “In Paradisum,” which became part of the Catholic requiem mass after being written down sometime between 996 and 1011.

Now, I’m not going to argue with Fisher’s credentials as a well-informed music maven. But I can assure him that nothing in the “rich history of transformation” he mentions compares to the rendition of this song on the sideline of football games played by St. Cecilia High School (what else did you expect?) in Englewood, NJ.

At the zenith of my alma mater’s gridiron glory, stretching from Vince Lombardi’s start as a football coach to a couple of years before it closed in 1986, “Saints” cheerleaders would lead the packed stadium with syncopated hand clapping and shouts as fans sensed victory.

I can assure Fisher that, no matter what he might believe, nothing before in the history of this much-played song could compare to the groundswell of glorious noise on these occasions—and, at this increasingly late stage in my life, I doubt that anything from now on ever will.

Photo of the Day: Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Corona, Queens

When asked about his religious views, Louis Armstrong was fond of saying he was raised Baptist, wore a Star of David around his neck, and was a friend of the Pope. In the last case, however much the pontiff may have been charmed by meeting him, it couldn’t have hurt that the great jazzman’s wife was a devout Catholic who attended Mass four blocks from their home in Corona, Queens.

Our Lady of Sorrows was the church that Lucille Armstrong attended. In the 1950s and 1960s, she may well have seen at services another faithful Catholic—and wife of a fun-loving jazz trumpeter—Lorraine Gillespie, who, with husband Dizzy, lived around the corner from the Armstrongs.

Lucille Armstrong and Lorraine Gillespie were two of the more unusual members of this parish that, since the church was built in 1872, has served successive waves of working-class immigrants. When the Armstrongs moved to Corona in 1943, most of the neighborhood traced their roots back to Italian, German and Irish ancestors. In the 1950s, more African-Americans populated the area. Now the parish is largely Hispanic—Dominican, Ecuadoran, and more recently, Mexican, with more than half being recently arrived immigrants from Latin America. 

I took this shot of the church (originally wooden, then converted to brick) when I was in the neighborhood a few days ago. The beautiful exterior you see here is a tribute to the intense rebuilding effort following a fire in January 2015. The parish used the next 21 months on the venerable church’s renovation, which included a new roof, floors, wall murals and statues; extensive electrical work; fresh paint and better lighting; lightened pews; and a reconciliation room to replace the dark confessional.

Quote of the Day (Clive James, on Louis Armstrong)

“The theory that art can have no direct impact on politics has the advantage of staving off wishful thinking, but it takes a beating when you think of what [Louis] Armstrong did, or helped to do. Jazz would not have been the same without him, and the whole artistic history of the United States in the twentieth century, quite apart from the country’s political history leading up to the civil rights movement, would not have been the same without jazz. There was no easy conquest, and Armstrong himself was the object of prejudice right to the end. He had to be brave every night he went to work.”—Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (2007)

Louis Armstrong, who died on this date in 1971, used his musical gift to transcend what crushed (and often has continued to crush) so many other African-Americans since the end of reconstruction—birth in the worst slum in turn-of-the-century New Orleans to a prostitute, childhood neglect, a stint in a juvenile home. Somehow, he overcame all that, expressing his irrepressible joy of life in his cornet and trumpet and, later, that equally distinctive voice.

In the 1950s, the musician became known as "Ambassador Satch" for his constant tours around the world. But all of this merely confirmed the fact that three decades earlier, he had been instrumental in creating one of America's few truly original art forms.