‘Play Gloria!’ Blues celebration song has Philly bar origins
By Stephen Whyno
The Boston Red Sox have “Sweet Caroline,” the Chicago Blackhawks have “Chelsea Dagger” and the old Hartford Whalers had “Brass Bonanza.” The St. Louis Blues? They have “Gloria,” the 1982 hit song for Laura Branigan that has improbably become the celebration song for a team that won 29 of 43 games to go from last in the NHL to the playoffs and all the way to the Western Conference final against San Jose.
If that seems odd, consider this: “Gloria” became a St. Louis craze in part because of a bar in South Philadelphia: Jacks NYB, a private club in the middle of Flyers country, is where five Blues players happened to watch the Eagles-Bears playoff game Jan. 6 and, well, things happened.
When the players arrived at the hole-in-the-wall with a locked front door, they were greeted with “Let’s go Flyers!” chants and some ribbing, but quickly assimilated with the crowd, cheesesteaks in hand. A club member kept yelling, “Play ‘Gloria!’” and DJ Matt Cella obliged by putting on Branigan’s catchy pop hit every commercial break.
“They just went nuts when they heard it, and we loved watching it,” Blues forward Robby Fabbri said. “So we just happened to get a win the next day and made it our win song.”
The Blues already had a song — “Runaround Sue” — but rookie Jordan Binnington’s shutout of the Flyers the next day in his first NHL start coincided with the team’s turnaround. Hockey players are particularly superstitious, so “Gloria” has become something of a sensation.
“They weren’t looking for a song that night,” Jacks NYB member Jerry Foschini said. “This is one of them things that never in a million years could be planned. It’s serendipity.”
Long before Fabbri and teammates Robert Bortuzzo, Alexander Steen, Joel Edmundson and Jaden Schwartz heard “Gloria” (over and over again) that night after an invite from friend Larry Yadan, members of the Jacks club made it their song as they prepared to march in and compete in the city’s annual Mummers Parade. When the Jacks won first place in their division, they played the song all over the neighborhood to celebrate.
“If we don’t win first place, we’re probably not having an Eagles party like that five days later and ‘Gloria’ would have probably died because it got on our nerves so much from the summertime,” club cofounder Mike Montecalvo said.
It’s been fun for Jacks, too, some 900 miles from St. Louis. An orange and black Flyers pennant hangs on the wall at Jacks but is dwarfed by the blue and gold regalia of the Blues. Even the Philadelphia 76ers’ NBA playoff run took a back seat to the members’ new favorite team trying to win its first Stanley Cup championship.
“It’s like I was at a sports bar in St. Louis,” said Brian Lamping, a St. Louis attorney who was in Philadelphia on business and watched a playoff game at Jacks. “It was surreal.”
Fans travel from places like St. Louis and Washington just to watch Blues playoff games at Jacks, a relatively new private bar with 43 members who all live within a mile of their hangout spot. Brendan Brassil, a St. Louis native who lives in Philly, found out about the place from the Blues’ Instagram account and made a pilgrimage to watch Game 1 of the West final against the Sharks. The place, of course, went wild when Bortuzzo scored the gamewinner Monday night to even the series with San Jose at one apiece.