"Fanfare for the Common Man" is a song by the English progressive rock supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), from the group's 1977 Works Volume I album. Adapted by Keith Emerson from Aaron Copland's 1942 piece of the same name, it is one of their most popular and enduring pieces.

ELP had previously adapted Copland's "Hoedown" for the band's Trilogy album in 1972. Although ELP did not always initially attribute the classical source for some of their pieces (only attributed in later releases of the albums), Copland was attributed as the source for both Hoedown and Fanfare. Unlike Bartók and Janáček, Copland was still alive at the time of the recording.

According to Emerson,

...it needed transposing, so I did that first. I wanted to improvise in a key that was sort of bluesy. It ended up in E. The rest of it was straightforward, really. You know, in order to get the shuffle sound, the timing had to be changed, but it was common sense.

Greg Lake remembers the first time ELP played the adaptation:

It was just wonderful how it came about: We were recording in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1976, and Keith was playing it as a piece of classical music. I played this shuffle bass line behind him and all of a sudden it started to connect. Then Carl came in and we three started to play it. Luckily, the engineer had a two-track running, and that is what’s on the record - the first time we played through the piece.

In another interview, Lake remarks:

We got a very ‘live’ dirty R & B sound that was really incredible. And all done with one microphone. We hadn’t played together for quite a while before that, apart from rehearsals and stuff. 'Fanfare' was thoroughly jammed, from top to bottom.

A video was filmed of the band members performing at an empty Montreal Olympic Stadium.

...
Wikipedia