Traditional · Key of G · Public domain
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When the Saints Go Marching In began life as an African American spiritual, taking shape in the early 1900s from a family of similarly titled gospel hymns of the 1890s and 1900s. The first known recording was made by the Paramount Jubilee Singers in 1923, and through the 1920s the song traveled between churches, street parades and blues singers. In New Orleans it became something more: brass bands played it slow and mournful on the way to a burial, then joyful and swinging on the way home, the sound at the heart of the jazz funeral tradition.
Louis Armstrong's 1938 recording with his orchestra carried the song around the world and made it a jazz standard, and it has since become the unofficial anthem of New Orleans itself. It remains one of the first songs guitarists, trumpet players and pianists everywhere learn, because three chords and one unforgettable melody are all it needs.
This is the classic three-chord workout: G, C and D7, plus a G7 that works as a secondary dominant (the V7 of IV), pulling the harmony into the C chord right where the melody lifts. Strum on the backbeat and it swings on its own. It is also a fantastic first song for playing with others, since everyone knows the words and the changes come at a friendly pace. Speed it up verse by verse the way the New Orleans bands do.
Further reading: History of Hymns: When the Saints Go Marching In (UMC Discipleship)
