"Sons of Westwood"
(played after a good play)
We are Sons of Westwood
And we hail to Blue and Gold
True to thee our hearts will be
Our love will not grow old,
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
Bruins roam the hills of Westwood
By the blue Pacific shores
And if we chance to see
A man from USC
Every Bruin starts to roar.
U...C...L...A...
UCLA, fight, fight, fight!
(repeat verse)
History
"Big C" was composed in 1913 by Harold P.
Williams, with lyrics by Norman Loyall McLaren. It was written to
commemorate the construction of the large concrete "C" in 1905 on the
"rugged Eastern foothills" of the Berkeley campus. The song was the
winning entry in the Daily Californian school song competition in 1913.
From the late 1940's until the 1960's UCLA and Cal alternatively hosted
a college football doubleheader game as part of the "All University
Weekend". The first game featured UC Davis vs. UCSB. In one of the last
"All U Weekends," at ; Kelley James, then Associate Director of the UCLA
Marching Band and alumnus of the Cal Band wrote an arrangement of "Big
C," for a halftime show performed by the combined marching bands from
UCLA, UC Davis, and Cal. Afterwards, UCLA continued using James'
arrangement of "Big C" as its fight song, adding their own lyrics and
renaming it "Sons of Westwood." It was soon adopted as UCLA's fight
song. UC Davis also uses the song, but kept the traditional "Big C"
name.
Many Cal fans, most notably Cal Band director James Berdahl, were
enraged over what they saw as James' theft of their song. A bitter
exchange ensued between Berdahl and James for the next several years
concerning the legal and ethical grounds for James' adaptation of the
song. Finally, on February 18, 1969, UCLA lawyers were told by the
Copyright Office of the Library of Congress that "Big C" had never been
copyrighted, and therefore in the public domain. However, to this day,
whenever Cal plays UCLA and "Sons of Westwood" is played, Cal fans sing
a parody ending, "but damn you, it's 'Big C.'"
