Mitch Miller - When Johnny Comes Marching Home (HD)

When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1898) “Although this song was born during the Civil War, it was not until the Spanish-American War (1898) that it became a national hit. Long before the Civil War this melody (almost note for note) was a touching old Irish streetsong, “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye,“ which described a young girl seeing her hopelessly maimed sweetheart for the first time upon his return from the war. The words of this song were written in 1863 by America’s great Irish bandmaster (with General Nathaniel Banks’ Army) Patrick S. Gilmore, under the pseudonym Louis Lambert. Gilmore had expected the Civil War to end much earlier than it actually did, and he wrote this song in preparation for a mammoth Peace Jubilee which he finally did give in Boston, 1869. This jubilee, by the way, used a 1000 piece orchestra and 10,000 voices. The song was well received both at this jubilee and also the succeeding one in 1872, but it was not until the time of William McKinley’s