051 - Championship

About the song

Written by Keith Mansfield.
Arranged by John Higgins.

Little is known about the origins of this song other than that CBS once used it as opening music for their coverage of a golf tournament in the 1980's. A number of other bands include this in their repertoire (eg: Brown) but no one seems to be able to find an "original" recording.

Instrumentation requirements

The opening downbeat is a bass drum hit with brass on the upbeat. They have to be watching very closely at the beginning.

Roadmap

With the loud and sudden opening to the song, (and its fanfare-like style - as opposed to rock or jazz) the song has the capacity to be more dramatic with a "silent" count-off. Charlie Scaringello started this technique (in recent memory, anyways) and typically did this by counting off two measures. For the first measure call out "1 ... 2" on beats 1 and 3 (like usual), then call out beats 1, 2, and 3 of the second measure decreasing in volume very quickly such that 3 can only be heard by the band and beat 4 is silent. Make sure you conduct all 8 beats and that the band is paying attention - otherwise you get a subdued cachophony.

History

America's Pep Band (album)
Previous track	Current track	Next track
16. Vehicle	17. Championship	18. Gospel John