01. The Monitors - Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam)02. Players - He'll Be Back03. William Bell - Marching Off to War04. Eddy "G" Giles & The Jive Five - While I'm Away (Baby Keep the Faith)05. Big Amos Patton - Going to Vietnam06. Mike Williams - Lonely Soldier07. Joe Tex - I Believe I'm Gonna Make It08. Johnny & Jon - Christmas in Vietnam09. Jimmy Holiday - I'm Gonna Help Hurry My Brothers Home10. James Carr - Let's Face Facts11. Zerben R. Hicks - Lights Out12. Richard Barbary - When Johnny Comes Marching Home13. Tiny Watkins - Soldier's Sad Story14. Emanual Laskey - Letter from Vietnam15. Gloria Edwards - Something You Couldn't Write About16. Mel & Tim - Mail Call Time17. The O'Jays - There's Someone (Waiting Back Home)18. Freda Payne - Bring the Boys Home19. Edwin Starr - Stop the War Now20. The Whispers - P.O.W. - M.I.A.21. Carla Whitney - War22. Bill Withers - I Can't Write Left Handed23. Curtis Mayfield - Back to the World24. Swamp Dogg - Sam Stone
15 comments:
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Thanks KC. Sometimes the themed comps can seem as if they're cobbled together but this one is a winner.
I am always haunted by these Vietnam compilations. My nineteen year old cousin enlisted in the Marines to serve and, one year after Nixon was elected, in part, because of an alleged peace plan, my cousin was hit by a mortal shell that blew half his body away several months before he was to come home. That half was reconstructed in plastic and his coffin sealed so the family could have an open casket in the hot July sun and humidity of New England. It took more than two months for his body or what was left of it to arrive home.
I was fourteen, already hated the war, and remember how haunted I was by the young Marines who carried his casket because in 1969 you knew that the chances of their returning alive or uninjured were remote. My cousin's photo appeared in the Life magazine issue devoted to the week in which the most American troops were killed. His mother, my father's sister, would refuse the medals that were to commemorate his sacrifice because Nixon lied and we detested him for it. There was no secret plan and countless other Americans, Australians, Canadians, Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians were killed in the futile quest for peace with honor, whatever the hell that meant, to ensure that Nixon was not the first president to lose a war. I did not understand then and still do not understand how one wages war to achieve peace.
I was the last in my family to see my cousin alive. He and another Marine visited me in the hospital while he was home on leave. I remember the grief-stricken faces of the older people, all dressed in black, at his funeral. They had experienced death and loss in war before but World War II seemed to have a moral purpose and Korea was almost forgotten because it "ended" in stalemate. By 1969 Vietnam was inexplicable and incomprehensible to them and they could not easily understand why my cousin's body was broken and lifeless, and they lived. In high school, at my all-male high school, we were haunted by the draft and the war, and thought it would never end. To watch all the helicopters and other equipment being destroyed at the end, after we graduated, as the North invaded the South and gave the lie to peace with honor seemed a fitting denouement to a moral catastrophe.
We now have a small voluntary group wage our wars for us and they and their returning bodies are no longer visible on television. The government learned better public relations and the "virtues" of censorship after Vietnam. We are now told to honor the broken and wounded returning home but not to question why they must be sent in the first place. For my part, I want a return to the draft. A country that wages war should not have large portions of the population untouched by the horror because others with limited economic opportunities are willing to offer themselves. When the asses of everyone or their children, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc. are on the line, maybe then we will think why we are willing to sacrifice whole generations to satisfy the whims of old men in power. Here then is another compilation that I will listen to, knowing that all the emotions and grief will return and knowing it is so necessary to remember. Thanks so much for posting it.
I certainly agree on the draft - the age of poor folks children fighting rich folks wars has got to end - spreading the pain might cause some hesitation - I always felt Bush should have put his own daughters in Iraq if it was so fucking important. Vietnam was always a pack of lies, a war fought entirely for economic reasons, but cloaked in anti-communist nonsense. Our former staunch ally from WWII, Ho Chi Min, became our enemy despite guarantees made to support him unifying the country, (to the best of my knowledge the US have never honored a single treaty or agreement EVER made with a nation of color) and we chose to support a pair of fascists who openly admired Hitler and later became the heads of the Vietnamese mafia in the US!
As for the compilation, it is pretty powerful, I had forgotten many of the songs and never heard others.
Thanks, le Roi. As far as W., the legacy admission with a dismal academic record who would cavalierly deny others opportunity while claiming that affirmative action affords preferential treatment, he, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should have been in the docket for war crimes in Iraq.
I loathed Saddam Hussein from the moment he seized power and purged the Iraqi government but recognized that his days only became numbered after he announced to the members of the Arab League in 1990 that they should pursue Nassar's vision of Arab unity to prevent the West from controlling their resources and foolishly assumed several months later that the first Bush' administration's disinterest in the fate of Kuwait would not change as soon as they assessed how much oil he would control if he were to win. Until then, he was our boy waging war against Iran with our support three decades after we and the British brought an end to Iranian democracy and reinstated the Shah.
In Vietnam, we chose to follow failed French dreams of raw resources, wealth, and empire rather than recognize the sovereignty of a people and their right to govern themselves. Worse, we fabricated a link with China that anyone knowledgeable about Vietnamese culture would have dismissed in contempt and disbelief. Sometimes I sit down with my daughters to discuss all of the wars and proxy wars in which we have been engaged in this country since the year of my birth. It boggles the mind.
One of the best books I read about Vietnam was the novel "The Sorrow Of War" by Bao Ninh. Rather than write anything about it, I'll only recommend it.
Wars and rumors of war.... My uncle was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in a German POW camp until the war ended. For years he would not speak of it. One year shortly before Christmas I gave my father, a veteran of the reconstruction, a copy of Studs Terkel's "The Good War" and after he speedily read it, he gave it to my uncle. At Christmas, my uncle expressed how moved he was by the book and Terkel's effort to articulate what war really is from interviews with participants from all sides. My uncle talked about his POW experience for the first time and I asked him how he had been treated by the Germans. He responded that there had not been much food. I asked whether the Germans were denying him and other captives food. After a few seconds, he responded, "No, they were young, fighting for their country and by that point without food for themselves after the devastation of the war. They had only as much as we had." He wasn't exculpating the Germans from their role in perpetuating the horror of Hitler's nightmare vision and efforts to achieve it, rather he was acknowledging that, like him, many German young men naively took up arms to fight for their country under the guise of "patriotism" as he and later my cousin had.
Le Roi, Bush's daughters would never go to Iraq because he was not compelled to serve in Vietnam. By virtue of their class and affluence, they claimed exemption. For that matter, Cheney never served and, to me. that is the most despicable and venal aspect of their characters, that he and W. would willingly sacrifice others in the name of a lie and their political aspirations. I keep thinking about all of the Iraqi citizens who have been killed while our news media only occasionally disclose American deaths as if the other deaths are to be expected and readily accepted in the alleged quest for freedom. Then, too, I ask how much better life for women in Afghanistan is and why negotiations with the Taliban are being entertained after so many deaths and so much suffering. Shades of peace with honor in 1973! I'll be honest I still can't watch Henry Kissinger on television either because I have a low tolerance for war crimes of any nationality.
Swamp Dogg singing John Prine's "Sam Stone"! If that doesn't speak to the transcendence of opposition, I don't know what does. As for the color issue, I used to tell my older, less educated cousin who had "mixed" feelings about Vietnam that he needed to think about why we had no qualms when selling wheat to assist the white Communists in the Soviet Union but waged war against the yellow Communists in Asia and a cruel embargo against the brown Communists in Cuba. As for treaties broken, if American Indians has survived in numbers equivalent to all of the treaties that the United States government broke with each nation, we would be living in a different society. Sometimes there is not enough soap to wash the stench of our collective history off our skins which is why we prefer to ignore it and unilaterally proclaim ourselves as the embodiment of American exceptionalism.
Excuse the rantings, but then I still am deeply disturbed by September 11, 1973 and what was imposed on Chileans in the wake of the coup so I tend to get off the track a bit and compilations like this tend to make me remember. Which is better than forgetting.
Wow - I love it when you get inspired FOB
I'm throwing this out for your consideration even though you have already reconsidered and will keep on keeping on. This blog has created a community that extends beyond mere postings about music. Through your recommendation, I have discovered Eisenberg and he has me thinking deeply about why I value music and recordings so greatly. I also discovered Gillett and am less inarticulate about the music I value so much because of him. I "met" Gus, who has sent me enough E-books to tide me over for at least two years even if I read two E-books a week. He continued to send them even when I was very ill and they were an excitingly wonderful present for me and now compete with my piles of regular books for my attention, demanding to be read. He even persuaded me to embrace twenty-first century technology by buying a Kindle. As a result, my whole family now has Kindles and my youngest daughter uses hers to fulfill literature course requirements in college. Through Gus, I also developed an appreciation for Earl Green to the point where I ordered through Amazon.com UK what Gus didn't send me. Through this blog, I "met" and eventually discovered the jazz stylings of Lazz. A joyous discovery at that!
I also discovered other related blogs that expanded exponentially my knowledge of jazz beyond the few artists whom I have loved and to whom I have listened for years. I "met" Poppachubby whose interest in music and sound quality of recordings and rips have few rivals, and I developed a deep respect for his effort to live his faith as evidenced by his response to the gospel posts. We share a love of reggae and things Jamaican. I also learned of the wedding of Gus' daughter, your losses during the botched aftermath and incompetence of federal, state, and local authorities in responding to of Hurricane Katrina, and David's and Lazz' loss because of fire. The destruction of memories and treasured objects through unforeseen catastrophe is awesome in the original sense of the word and yet you all recovered with healthy insight and equanimity.
Through this blog, I have learned through the donations of patsoul and other contributors from other countries that the cultural contribution that I most value that this country has made to the world, the syncretic music that was formed in New Orleans and other urban places, as well as in the delta, matters as much to them as it does to me. In addition, my horizons were expanded by the personal stories and humor of those who regularly contribute when they or we don't limit the discussion to music.
But we also write about music and how important it is to our lives. I am still fighting the latest chronic illness and dealing with the vicissitudes of whatever yet to be diagnosed malady ails me and rely on music, books, and this blog to take me places far beyond my increasingly temporary shut-in existence. From my past medical adventures, I know I'll bounce back but the music is so important to that recovery. For example, the other day while driving to pick up my daughter from college and fighting the nausea that occurs far too often when I am in a car, I played Geater Davis's music in the car. Focusing on the music made the driving much more tolerable and my ears danced to the soulful beat. He and Percy Mayfield were merely names in articles and books about music to me before I discovered this blog. They and so many other artists I have discovered here add to my awareness that the greatest cultural contributions to and from our hodge-podge voluntary and involuntary immigrant society to the world were formed under oppressive conditions that should have crushed the artists' souls, yet didn't. So many artists posted here had short and, in some cases, tragic lives but to me they remain alive on my stereo and through this blog. That is no small matter to me.
Gus always reprimands me for being self-effacing. But the self-effacement is predicated on my belief since childhood that those who play and create music artfully are, in fact, shamans or near deities, sharing the richness and wonders of their magic, power, and creativeness with us. Were it not for this blog, I would not have the temerity to communicate with artists like Gus and Lazz. Instead, were I to meet them in person as musicians and artists, I would babble incoherently or remain silent in awe of their talent. Gus' reprimands won't alter the core belief because it is integral to how I regard the effect of music on me, its power to evoke memories and experiences and its importance to making life more joyful.
There are so many musical memories provided by this blog: Arthur Alexander, James King, Percy Mayfield, Geater Davis, James Booker, and Marva Wright, among so many others. Moreover, my appreciation for New Orleans and its importance and uniqueness in our culture has increased ten-fold because of how and what you write about it. In truth, I am still muddling along day to day and often fatigued but when I saw the paucity of comments responding to such great posts of some of my favorite blues artists and realized how important a resource this blog is, I forced myself to respond and being Irish, albeit two generations removed, once I get going, who knows what blarney will follow.
Call it mawkish but when I read your comments about your occasional frustration and loss of interest in continuing this blog, I am reminded of Frank Capra's George Bailey in "It's A Wonderful Life" and his initial inability to understand his importance to the well-being of the community. I so appreciate the comments of Lazz and Gus, and the others, for more succinctly and articulately writing this week what I feel. The loss of this blog would be the loss of that small community of music-obsessed souls who are willing to share experiences, favorite books, and music across the borders of state, province, and country. It's a cliche that you read too often when you vent your frustration, but, even when I was unable to write because of fatigue, I was still there reading every post because they and the music enrich my life albeit in a small way. Then again, as I grow older the small gestures and experiences outweigh the significant. They comprise the real substance of our lives. As an example, I can imagine Lazz in his kitchen in distant Vancouver, a beautiful city but for the ocean being on the wrong side and depriving him, an expatriate, of the ability to gaze eastward across the waves and muse about England. He's enjoying a fine cup of tea and nodding rhythmically to the music you have provided and, like me, he doesn't care whether its in mp3 format or not. I can imagine Gus and his band playing in a small English pub for the hell of it, aspirations to a recording contract lost with youth, and for that reason the music is more meaningful. I think of Peer maintaining two music blogs and still having time to contribute to this one. It's enough to say that losing this blog would mean a loss of the music and relegate those relationships with invisible colleagues to memory.
I have never been one to try to dissuade someone from doing what he or she needs to do which is why before you posted your comments in the Chatroom about continuing, I didn't ask you to reconsider. But I am glad you have. At our respective ages, we are beginning to experience enough losses without having to lose the uniqueness that this blog represents. The mind is dull and the fingers tired so I'll end it here.
Thank you for this compilation,KC, which really made me think!
However the song is not included in the compilation, I wonder If there is any more powerful statement against
The Vietnam war and any other war than the Edwin Starr song: "War"
Really!!! I am very impressed after seeing the details about sad story of a soldier in this blog. thanks for sharing.
sad story of a soldier
Please re-up
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