 Tuesday, 29th May 2012 09:13 These days fans of Tottenham Hotspur try to tell you otherwise, but lets be clear Oh When The Saints Go Marching In is our club anthem not theirs. To be truthful most football clubs dont have songs that can be truly said to be theirs and theirs alone, even those that do often have their songs plagiarised by countless other teams with the words changed to suit the stealing club, Saints are one of those select band though that do have a song that is associated with them, from the very time the tune became popular there was only one club in English football that claimed it for their own and whom it referred to by name in the title, well nickname at least. Surprisingly though Oh When The Saints is not as old a tune as you would might think, it was originally written in the 1920's as a dixieland jazz song and for a decade or so it was virtually unheard of outside of New Orleans, that all changed in the 1930's when Louis Armstrong recorded a version that brought it to a wider audience, but still it wasnt well known in England and indeed in Southampton. In October 1950 the Saints supporters association adopted "The bells of St Mary's" as the clubs theme tune, the song was much better known than "Oh When The Saints" having been the title track of a popular film from 1945 of the same name starring Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman. A local musician named Monty Warlock was commisioned to write some special lyrics. The bells of St Mary's a message are bringing Its play up and win now as cheers round you roll
So up for Saints and win boys for victory we're singing You've got em beat We're on our feet Its goal ! Goal ! Goal ! Ok you do need to know the tune I think . The jazz explosion of the 1950's brought Oh When the Saints to the masses and it was quickly adopted by Saints supporters, remember in these days you didnt have singing sections in grounds and vocal support in this matter tended to be of the one song variety, but this was our one song and synonomous with Southampton Football Club. The 1960's brought on the emergence of terrace choirs, the most famous one being the Kop at Liverpool and soon every ground had its own version, at the Dell it was situated in the Milton Road End under what older readers will remember as the Toomers Chocolate box. Other teams would sing Oh When The Saints adapted to the colours of their own team, but other teams sang everyone elses songs as well, so although it would be sung across the country everyone knew who the true owners were. In the past five years or so, Spurs have tried to take over this song as their own, of course the word Spurs slots in nicely in place of Saints, but the fact of the matter is that the author back in 1920's New Orleans almost certainly would never have heard of Spurs (He wouldnt have heard of the New Orleans Saints football team either, they werent formed till 1967) so Spurs are doing what they do best and thats steal their songs from others. Now of course we are back in the Premiership so we have the chance to show the rest of the country and indeed the World that the true sporting home of this song is Southampton
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