Right now is an exciting time for the University of Alabama’s football team. And most Bama fans would agree that football games just wouldn’t be the same without hearing Alabama’s fight song, “Yea, Alabama!” This song was penned in 1926 in response to a competition held by the university’s student magazine, the Rammer Jammer, to replace the current fight song being used, “Swing,” which was owned by Washington and Lee University. The winner of the competition was an engineering student and the editor of the student newspaper, the Crimson White, Ethelred Lundy (Epp) Sykes. Sykes won a $50 prize for composing the tune.

We have a number of copies of Rammer Jammer available online, including the issue that features the new fight song, from May 1926. Below are images of the pages that contain the music and lyrics for the song. Notice that the original version has an extra verse placed before where the fight song is traditionally begun now.