without you, girl, there was no days
i’ve been listening to these vietnam-era music compilations over the past few days. quick summary from the site i yapped it from:
As much a penetrating and painful lesson in American history as it is a fantastic set of vintage soul, A Soldier’s Sad Story: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Black America 1966-73 documents a very different dimension of antiwar protest music. Edwin Starr’s classic “War” aside, the mainstream antiwar canon comprises songs written and performed almost entirely by white folkies (Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Barry McGuire, etc.), but the African-American response was just as potent and provocative, with an underlying sense of hopelessness and disenfranchisement that speaks volumes about the mindset of the black counter-culture as war raged not only in South-east Asia but also in places like Detroit and Watts. Ranging from the gritty deep soul of James Carr (“Let’s Face Facts”) to the sweet folksoul of Bill Withers (“I Can’t Write LeftHanded”), the set spans not only musical styles but also varying shades of polemical intensity; some cuts are confrontational and direct, others elegiac and allegorical, but all burn with the emotional honesty and complexity that are the hallmarks of soul music at its finest.
there are two sets. “A Soldier’s Sad Story” and “Does Anybody Know I’m Here” cover overlapping but slightly different time periods, and have similar feels. what struck me most about the songs, none of which i’d heard before save for the obligatory “War! HUH! What is it goooood fuh,” was that they tended to revolve around two things: love and God.
in Joe Tex’s “I Believe I’m Gonna Make It,” he sings:
Listen, baby (ooh, oh baby) I wished a thousand times That we had gotten married Before I left home for Vietnam But then when I see so many of my buddies Getting’ shot down all around me Makes me kinda glad that we waited Because I don’t wanna leave you At home being a widow, no I know you understand, babe
it’s fatalist and honest all at the same time. if he’d wifed her, she would’ve been a widow and had her life forever turned. as just a boyfriend, though, he’s just someone who isn’t there any more. earlier in the song, he says that a letter from her gave him the strength to get up out of his foxhole and take out two more enemies.
many of the songs are civilians begging for loved ones to return home or cursing the fact that they never came home at all. others use love to hammer home the comparison between being in a country shooting some man who never did you wrong and sitting up with your old lady. love is simultaneously strength and a source of immense regret. it’s the thing about how “it’s better to have loved and to have lost, than to never have loved at all.”
protest songs these days tend to be very on the nose and basic. “my president is black, george bush sucks, barack is cool, get us out of iraq.” it’s not really an intellectual appeal so much as a straightforward one. “the revolution has been commodified,” so to speak.
there’s a line in Swamp Dogg’s rendition of Sam Stone that jumped out at me. it’s a song about a guy who comes back from vietnam with a medal “and a monkey on his back,” and the ensuing downfall of his family. when he sings “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes, Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose,” it’s kind of a big deal.
maybe it’s because i’m the product of the black church, but i don’t think you can understate the effect of the church on black families. for a song to put this kind of sentiment out there, back then, is a big deal. it’s a kind of pessimism and bravery that most anti-bush anthems never had. it reaffirms the faith even as it expresses disenchantment with it. it’s raw and emotional.
it really works for me. it does exactly what it should, which is suggest that maybe, just maybe, vietnam is not all it’s cracked up to be.
