The Tiger Rag is perhaps best known these days as the fight song for the Clemson University Tigers, a southeastern football team. (That's American football, not soccer.)

In its role as the Clemson fight song, the Tiger Rag is played by Clemson's marching band in what's known as the "25 most exciting seconds in college football", where 80 thousand crazed fans yell as the Clemson Tigers rub Howard's rock and run down The Hill into Death Valley Stadium.

The song was purchased in 1942 by Robert Dean Ross, a Clemson band member. Originally, the band was apprehensive of playing the song at any time other than when the team scored. Now, "the song that shakes the Southland" is played over 500 times per season, not to mention the Tiger Rag car horns and cell phone rings. The Encyclopedia of Popular Culture has identified it as one of the "most rousing college songs".

The Tiger Rag was also chosen as one of the first 50 songs to be preserved in the National Recording Registry, in accordance with the 2000 National Recording Preservation Act. Composed in 1904 and originally performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Tiger Rag was recognized as "initiating a craze for the new art form of the age, jazz."

If you've heard the modern Tiger Rag, you'll notice it's practically impossible to understand the lyrics. If you look it up, you'll find most people think there are only two lines: "Hold that tiger" and "Where's that tiger?" That's not true, though; there are lyrics beyond that to the jazz hit, but you'll be hard-pressed to find them.

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