History
"Charge" was written by Tommy Walker while a junior at the University of Southern California in the fall of 1946. The fanfare consists of six notes followed by rooters shouting, "Charge!" Occasionally, the fanfare is repeated one or more times in the same key or in successively higher keys, or is preceded by a lead-in vamp.
In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and in the spring of 1959 the Dodgers put on sale, at $1.50 apiece, 20,000 toy trumpets capable of playing the six notes of the "Charge" fanfare. The fanfare was heard in NBC broadcasts of games 3, 4 and 5 of the 1959 World Series between the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox.
It also appeared in the original The Flintstones 1960s television cartoon series (episode dates uncertain), followed by "Charge!" or "Charge it!", shouted by characters on the way to a shopping spree.
Bobby Kent, former musical director of the San Diego Chargers, has claimed he invented the "Charge" fanfare in 1978 while working for the Chargers. Kent filed suit against ASCAP for negotiating licenses with MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA and NASCAR while failing to secure his consent. The Lakers settled with Kent for $3,000.
Read more about this topic: Charge (fanfare)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)