The history behind the University of Iowa's
iconic fight song is certainly unique.
The nearly 63-year-old tune is one of only a few
fight songs to be written by a famous songwriter.
In this case, Iowa's own Meredith Willson.
Dr. Eric Bush: Meredith Willson was born in 1902
and his upbringing is well-documented in Iowa.
He moved to New York and went to the Institute of
Musical Art, which would later be called the
Juilliard School.
And it was during that time that he actually had
a three year stint with the John Philip Sousa
Band.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: He was a good flute player
and a good piccolo player and has an amazing career
and an appreciation for march music within the
Sousa Band that sort of permeated his music for
the rest of his life.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a
need at the University of Iowa for a new fight song.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: There was a need for a
fight song that was more on par with other peer
institutions, certainly in the Big Ten Conference and
across the United States.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: There was a director of
publicity at Iowa and he reached out to Meredith
Willson being one of the big names musician wise
from Iowa and said, would you be interested in
writing the university a new fight song?
So, he did and he wrote a tune called "The Iowa
Fight Song" and it went through a number of
revisions.
There was an addition that came over from the band
director at Iowa at the time, he had some edits to
it and said, why don't you consider this, here are
some ranges, here are some better ways to think of
melody with wind instruments, here's some
considerations with the key and also he said
something along the lines of it needs to hit them
right in the eyes.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: So it starts with a big
cymbal crash and the band chants, what's the word,
fight, fight, fight and then it picks up --
and it has that sort of rouser quality that they were
looking for in a fight song.
Ladies and gentleman, the Hawkeye Marching Band!
What's the word?
Fight, fight, fight!
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: The Iowa Fight Song was
debuted on a national radio show called "The Big
Show" and Meredith Willson was doing a little bit of
a stick or a standup and he was telling some jokes
and he got into this thing about how the University
of Iowa needed a new fight song to help the team,
they weren't doing so hot at the time.
This is the big week in football, the bowl games,
you know.
So I wrote a song for my home state university,
Iowa.
See, Iowa was just nosed out in a game with Ohio
State, 83 to 21.
(laughter)
Dr. Eric Bush: And he talked about the
Iowa Fight Song and what it meant and how it was a
sort of a gift to the University of Iowa and he
wrote it up and they actually premiered it and
it was a great band that played it and it's a
version that is a little bit different than
anything that we sort of have nowadays.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: It was an instant classic.
It was really well received and it was just
instantly known as one of the great fight songs.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: It's just really
interesting to see how he envisioned that tune and
then of course you fast forward 70 years later and
how we're still playing a version of that for our
pregame sequence.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: Meredith Willson always
had a deep connection to the state of Iowa.
He was an Iowa boy through and through.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: It's well-documented that
he came back to Iowa often and he was often a guest
of the Hawkeye Marching Band.
There's plenty of video and photography of him on
the ladder conducting the HMB and he was of course a
big favorite.
♪♪
Dr. Eric Bush: I think he brought march
music into the mainstream because of his popularity
in America and his voice in a number of different
genres.
He wrote symphonies, he wrote film music, of
course he wrote a great American fight song.
All of those things sort of made him popular for a
lot of different reasons.
And when those early experiences with march
music permeated his later music it really brought it
to the stage and brought it to the American
forefront.
People started to listen to this music and
appreciate it at a higher level.
♪♪