Lyrics
Oh, when the saints go marching in,
Oh, when the saints go marching in,
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the saints go marching in.
Oh, when the sun refuse to shine,
Oh, when the sun refuse to shine,
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the sun refuse to shine.
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call,
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call,
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the trumpet sounds its call.
Public domain hymn text. Traditional American gospel song, author unknown.
The Story Behind the Hymn
'When the Saints Go Marching In' belongs to the same broad tradition of orally transmitted African American gospel song as many spirituals, with no single, reliably documented author. Printed versions began appearing in gospel songbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, but the song almost certainly circulated in churches and camp meetings well before that.
Its imagery draws on the Book of Revelation's picture of the redeemed gathered before God's throne, imagining the resurrection not as a solemn event but as a joyful procession, and framing the singer's hope in the plainest possible terms: simply wanting to 'be in that number.'
The song became closely associated with New Orleans, where it was adopted into the city's distinctive jazz funeral tradition, played first as a slow dirge on the way to the cemetery and then, on the way back, as an upbeat celebration of the deceased's entry into glory.
That dual use, mournful on the way out and joyful on the way back, mirrors the song's own theology: it takes death seriously enough to name it, in lines about the sun refusing to shine and the moon dripping with blood, while still treating the ultimate outcome as cause for celebration rather than despair.
Louis Armstrong's 1938 recording brought the song to a vastly wider, largely secular audience, and it has since been recorded across jazz, gospel, blues, and pop traditions, likely making it one of the most widely performed African American gospel songs in the world.
Despite that huge secular popularity, the song's core remains a straightforwardly devotional hope. Its plain, repeated structure, naming one apocalyptic sign after another, the sun failing, the trumpet sounding, and answering each with the same simple wish to be counted among the saints, was built for congregations to sing together without needing to read anything down from a page.
That combination, a text simple enough for anyone to join immediately and a subject serious enough to be sung at funerals, is likely why the song has endured in both sacred and secular settings for well over a century.
