(Editor’s note: The Old Gold series provides a look at University of Iowa history and tradition through images housed in University Archives, Department of Special Collections.)
The story of “On, Iowa,” the University of Iowa’s beloved song, combines the will of an Iowa law graduate named Law with a few elements of Hollywood, where “Let’s put on a show” meets “A star is born.” Over the course of two years in the early 20th century, the song blossomed from failed contest entry to full-on crowd pleaser.
Recognizing that the State University of Iowa had no song to call its own, the Chicago Alumni Association of the university offered a $250 prize in 1916 for best original, strictly SUI song. Compositions were submitted to President Walter Jessup’s office, files which to this day remain in his papers at the University Archives. Some two-dozen entries arrived in late 1916 and 1917.
The letters accompanying the entries ranged from the novel (“I can sing the counties of Iowa. Why would this not be a good one?”), to the insistent (“Please shoot this proposition through as fast as you can and see if we can do business at once”). Old Gold can’t imagine a singer recounting all of Iowa’s 99 counties alphabetically before the game’s opening kickoff—no offense, Wright County—nor can he imagine President Jessup’s assistant caving to the demands of a hard-boiled agent.
Thankfully, neither was selected as the university’s new song. But W.R. Law’s submission, “On, Iowa,” didn’t survive the judges’ scrutiny either. Instead, the honors went to “Iowa, University Iowa” by F.W. and H.R. Newsom of Fort Madison, announced in August 1917. Law, a 1904 College of Law graduate, kept his musical score on the shelf and continued his law practice in Waterloo, his hometown.
Two years later, though, a persistent Law reintroduced his work, this time to O.E. Van Doren, director of the UI band, which was in Waterloo to perform a concert one summer evening. As Law recalled in a 1923 issue of The Iowa Alumnus, “[Director Van Doren] told me it was too late for the band to play it that night. [But] a few days later I received a letter from him urging publication and telling me that the boys of the band liked it very much.” The song was first officially used in the fall of 1919, before the Iowa-South Dakota football game, and was an instant success.
The rest, as they say, is Hawkeye history. The band’s rendition of Mr. Law’s school song was so well-received by the crowd that it was hurriedly published and put on sale in Iowa City at the Homecoming game against Iowa State two weeks later. Today it is joined by Meredith Willson’s “Iowa Fight Song,” published in 1950, as two of the university’s most popular musical traditions, before and after each home football and basketball game.
To learn more about the university’s songs and traditions, visit the University Archives’ resource guide at www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/archives/faq/faqtraditions.htm.
Writer's note: About the song title—is it “On Iowa” or “On, Iowa”? The original 1919 sheet music does not include a comma—not on the title page, at the top of page one, or in the lyrics. But by 1936 the comma was in use in songbooks and elsewhere, if not consistently. Over the years, “On, Iowa” seems to have won out as the preferred style.
Click on the files below to read a letter (pages one and two) from W.R. Law to the Office of the President of the University, dated Sept. 27, 1916, and housed among the papers of Walter Jessup in the University Archives.