# The Military Cadence Call

*Origin and record of the American drill cadence: Black American creation in the work-song line.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: Music & Sound · Status: In review · Revised: June 30, 2026 · Revisions: 4
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/cadence-calls

## Summary

The marching cadence of the United States military, the call-and-response chant of every boot camp in the country, traces to a Black soldier: Private Willie Lee Duckworth of Sandersville, Georgia, whose Sound Off chant first pulled a tired column into step at Fort Slocum, New York, in 1944. The armed forces call it the Duckworth Chant, and the lineage behind it is older than the Army.

## The archive's standing

The American military cadence is Black oral tradition in uniform, authored by Willie Lee Duckworth in the direct lineage of the work song and the field holler. The archive holds the authorship as settled; only the royalty accounting remains under sourcing.

## Sound off, 1944

Marching home in the dark with an exhausted provisional company, Duckworth began a chanted call with the column answering, and the formation lifted. The chant was adopted, recorded, and spread through the still-segregated Army into every branch of service, where cadence calling remains standard drill to this day.

## From the field to the formation

The cadence did not appear from nowhere. Call-and-response is the oldest engine of Black American music: the work song, the field holler, the gandy dancers timing track work by chant. The military cadence is that lineage in uniform, which is why this record files it beside  and  rather than apart from them. The keepers are completing the sourcing on Duckworth's royalty history before the record takes the seal.

## Setting the record straight

**The claim:** Cadence calls are just old military tradition. Nobody invented them.

**The record:** The modern American cadence has a birth certificate: Willie Lee Duckworth, a Black private in a segregated Army, 1944, in the direct lineage of the work song and the field holler.

## Sources

1. Burke, Carol. “Marching to Vietnam.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 102, no. 406, 1989.
2. Lentz, Bernard. The Cadence System of Teaching Close Order Drill and Exhibition Drills. Military Service Publishing, 1955 ed.

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Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "The Military Cadence Call," revised June 30, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/cadence-calls

Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.