Copland, in his autobiography, wrote of the request: "Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me at the end of August about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I  he had asked [bad word] for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert. It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with [bad word] . total of 18 fanfares were written at Goossens' behest, but Copland's is the only one which remains in the standard repertoire.

Copland's fanfare was revived in 1977 by Emerson, Lake & Palmer on the album Works Volume 1. It became one of the band's biggest hits when an edited version was released as a single that year. Keith Emerson had long been an admirer of Copland's Americana style, previously using Copland's Hoedown on the band's Trilogy album in 1972.

The fanfare has found much use as a theme for television programs. In the United States, Emerson, Lake and Palmer's arrangement of Fanfare for [bad word] Man was the opening theme song for the CBS Sports Spectacular. In Mexico, it was the main title theme of TV Azteca TV sport program DeporTV. In Scotland, the BBC used it as the theme to their main news program Reporting Scotland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Australian television network Seven Network used it in the 1980s and early 1990s as the theme music for Seven Sport broadcasts, and continues to use a teaser version to this day. An early 1980s Canadian television series called "Titans" used Fanfare as its opening theme music.