HAND IN HAND (KAMERADEN)
Created on 06/11/2001Latest update on 28/02/2025
Artist: Wilhelm Speidel
Author: Wilhelm Speidel
Year: 1887
There's a book about this song: Het Lied Van Feyenoord, by Jimmy Tigges & Paul Groenendijk (Nijgh & Van Ditmar). They trace back the roots of their favorite team's anthem to a songbook published in 1887 by Franz Portius in Leipzig, ...while no hard evidence survived. Very strange; no serious music library or archive, not in Germany nor anywhere else, seems to hold a specimen. Speidel (1826-1899) was a music teacher from Ulm who ran his own Künstler und Dilettantenschule in Stuttgart. So to trace back the roots of a widespread football song to a nazi German Wehrmachtslied was headlined in newspapers, especially in Rotterdam, a city completely blown to pieces during WW II. For the only evidence at least the refrain existed before the war, see the composition of Isé Joëls from 1927, treated here as oldest cover.
Covers:
- 1927:
Isé Joëls [as A.S.V. Marsch - Atlantic Sport Vereniging; was the bandleader on the Volendam, a steamboat on the transatlantic Holland-Amerika Line; every vessel on that line had at least one hundred sailors on board per Atlantic crossing; so ,it's easy to imagine they also had their own football team and song (see sheetmusic); the refrain goes: Hand in hand kameraden, Hand in hand werkt allen mee, Geen woorden maar in daden, leve A.S.V.]
- 1958:
Abe Lenstra [Dutch football player as Geen Woorden Maar Daden; just those words and the melody that goes with it]
- 1961:
Jacky van Dam [from Rotterdam; hit in Holland in '63, the year Feyenoord started accumulating European football fame]
- 1963:
Legioen [Feyenoord supporters as Geen Woorden Maar Daden (Hand In Hand, Kameraden)]
- 1963:
Blinde Piet uit Rotterdam [accordionist]
- 1963:
Supporters FC Boom [idem; champions in Belgian third division A; song was heard all over Belgium too, from Tongeren to Turnhout]
- 1964:
Johnny Hoes [in medley]
- 1964:
Tobi Rix [alias Tobietel Rix in medley with I Want To Hold Your Hand]
- 1966:
Tony Bass [Ajax version]
- 1967:
Amsterdamse Arie [as Hand In Hand Voor Ajax; shock value cover]
- 1975:
Jacky van Dam [new recording with new names in the lyrics; no hit, and again in '83 and '92 (house version); good advise: always leave out names of players in football songs]
- 1998:
Supporters Racing Genk [idem]
- 1999:
Cock van der Palm [swing version]
- 2001:
The refrain was heard in football circles in Belgium and Holland since the 1930s. Johnny Hoes, who played football with Rotterdam club COAL, remembered singing: 'Hand in hand, kameraden, hand in hand voor COAL 1'. After hearing it yelled by Feyenoord supporters when their team finally won the Dutch title again in 1961, he approached songwriter Jaap Valkhoff (author of Diep In Mijn Hart) to use this refrain in a whole song. The result was cut with singer Jacky van Dam (real name: Jaap Plugers). That's when it was copyrighted with BUMA/STEMRA. The song first charted two years later, when Feyenoord became a major European football team. Once a hit, controversy erupted: Singer/comic Leen de Bruin claimed he wrote the song in 1934 when his football team SVV (Schiedam) celebrated its 30th anniversary. He had a point: 'Leve SVV' indeed sounds more natural than 'Leve Feyenoord 1'. Finally, the Hand In Hand Jaap Valkhoff wrote for Tante Leen in '55 is a different song.
