In Friday’s (9/30) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes that on Thursday night, Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony “gave the world premiere of a freshly minted arrangement of the Detroit Tigers 1968 theme song ‘Go Get ‘em Tigers’ as an encore in honor of the team’s playoff run beginning tonight. How fresh? Well, DSO principal librarian Robert Stiles and librarian Ethan Allen completed the arrangement in about 2½ hours Thursday afternoon and vocalist Nicole New—the DSO’s artistic liaison by day—learned the song in the car on the way to Somerset. The orchestra performed it without rehearsal, with Slatkin leading the audience through a sing-along of sorts. The adventure started early in the day, when Slatkin was interviewed on the ‘Paul W. Smith Show’ on WJR-AM (760). After discussing the DSO’s upcoming season, the conversation turned to the Tigers and Slatkin—a diehard St. Louis Cardinals’ fan who has adopted the Tigers as his American League favorite since assuming the reigns of the DSO — said that he wanted to add a fight song to the orchestra’s repertoire. Smith had the recording handy of ‘Go Get ‘em Tigers.’ … The song was written by the late metro Detroiter Artie Fields, who wrote countless jingles as head of his own production company.”
Posted October 3, 2011
