St. Thomas is one of the most recognizable instrumentals in American jazz. Although commonly credited to Sonny Rollins, the tune is based on the Bahamian folk song Sponger Money and the English song The Lincolnshire Poacher, which through the folk process became a nursery tune in the Virgin Islands that Rollins's mother sang to him as a child. It was popularized on Rollins's 1956 album Saxophone Colossus, after an earlier recording by Randy Weston in 1955 under the title Fire Down There on Get Happy. The piece is a jazz standard in the key of C major and remains a staple of the 1950s jazz repertoire.
