John Philip Sousa's great fame grew in large part from his heartfelt tribute to the United States Marine Corps, Semper Fidelis, a splendid military march with swaggering broad tunes. Listeners expecting something similar from Glory of the Yankee Navy are apt to go away puzzled.

While the march is very entertaining, it does not have a strong patriotic or martial feeling. This is explained by the fact that it did not originate as a service march at all. It is affectionate and no disservice to the Navy, but it has an unusually light flavor, although the last strain of the march, with Sousa's usual careful attention to all his marches' conclusions, does contain sufficient rousing spirit.

The explanation is that the march originally was an instrumental number in one of Sousa's many operettas, in this case, The Yankee Girl (1909). Sousa dedicated it to the leading lady of the play, one Blanche Ring. While audiences for Sousa's operettas certainly expected a spirited march or two to come by sometime, Sousa had to be careful not to let the march blow away the play and the other music; hence, the light and unmilitary bearing. The original name of the march seems to have been "Uncle Sam's Navy," which is actually a little more accurately descriptive of its flavor.

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