It was on this date in 1897 that John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” was given its premiere in Philadelphia. Sousa composed the piece, in large part, on Christmas Day, 1896. He knocked it off in a New York hotel room in just a couple of hours.
Though the first performance was enthusiastically received, it wasn’t until the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898 that sales went through the roof. This was precipitated in part by the composer organizing a pageant involving hundreds of performers, complete with flag-bearing soldiers and a ravishing beauty decked out in red, white and blue.
With a dash of canny showmanship, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” surfed the wave of wartime patriotism to world-wide and lasting renown.
John Philip Sousa conducts his best known music: