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Washington Commanders Marching Band

official marching band for the Washington Commanders

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ20858250 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Washington Commanders Marching Band is the marching band for the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). It is the league's oldest marching band.

The group was established in September 1937 by a local milk company and quickly embraced by team owner George Preston Marshall as The Redskins Marching Band.

After a two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic and Redskins naming controversy, the band was reformed with its current name in 2022.

History

Establishment

In the middle of August 1937, a volunteer band was assembled in an old firehouse at in Mount Rainier, Maryland. The nucleus of the band had played together previously under the auspices of a large local dairy company. After speeches were given, a new fight song called "Hail to the Redskins!", with music music by Barnee Breeskin and lyrics by Corinne Griffith, Hollywood actress and wife of team owner Marshall, was taught to the assemblage — who had to be persuaded that the new tune was superior to "Onward, Christian Soldiers," a tune which the band already knew and preferred.

The Redskins Marching Band was born. In the team's words, "For the rest of the season these musical milkmen played to their hearts' content — and to the fans' delight." The entertainment experiment was a success and team owner George Preston Marshall embraced the marchers as "The Redskins Band." Twenty thousand dollars were invested in elaborate band uniforms, including gaudy Indian headdresses in lieu of more typical band headgear.

The Redskins Band also played short musical arrangements during timeout, carefully timed to the 90-seconds allowed for such stoppages.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Washington Commanders Marching Band” is official marching band for the Washington Commanders. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Washington, Commanders and Marching, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1937, 2022—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Washington, Commanders and Marching is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “official marching band for the Washington Commanders” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20858250. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937 and 2022.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Washington Commanders Marching Band primary sources, Washington Commanders Marching Band archive and Washington research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Washington Commanders Marching Band” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.