Vietnam Song Download
Kathrine Selvage
Time for the 2nd post in this series taking a look at popular music during the Vietnam War and suggestions for a playlist that you can listen to while you play wargames covering the time. In Part 1 we looked at music from 1964 to 1969 and it included 11 songs. Part 2 will take a look at music from 1970-1975 and includes 12 songs. As I mentioned in Part 1, I tend to gravitate more to the folk rock side of the genre, although a good guitar riff is also very appealing to me, with some of my favorite artists of the time being Boy Dylan, Neil Young (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), The Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Please let me know what songs you enjoy from the period.
Also, one final caveat. I know that some of the songs that I have included on this list are decidedly anti-war. This post is not a political statement and I am not trying to take a position. I support my country and the men and women who have fought and still fight to keep it free.
When Lennie Kravitz covered the song in 2009 it rejuvenated my interest in the song and added it back into my listening rotation. I really enjoy the Guess Who version of the song the best and find the guitar riff to be enervating.
I know that this one might not be as tied directly to the Vietnam War but it sure is a good song. I know that it is a bit dark, and admittedly called EVIL by the band, but it has always spoken to me, especially the opening lyrics.
I simply love this song. I actually admittedly am a huge fan of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and later Neil Young rock is some of my most listened to music from the period. In fact, I just bought a Neil Young Greatest Hits album from Walmart in that $5.00 bin and have downloaded it to my phone and added most of those songs to this list.
Ohio is a protest song and counterculture anthem written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970 after after seeing the photos of the incident in Life Magazine.
I have listened to this song about a 1,000 times and absolutely love it. I watched The Vietnam War Documentary film by Ken Burns a few years ago and was very touched by the segment on the Kent States Shootings and this song. Those were really turbulent times, probably very similar to our current situation, and songs like this frame up the feeling of that time very well.
What list would be complete without something from The Doors. Riders on the Storm is a meandering journey through the musical stylings of the band and just feels like it fits in this time and space in history.
When I think about this song and the Vietnam War, I think about the many fathers whose sons were in the war 5,000 miles away and who they would never see again and get to spend time with. I am sure that is a horrible feeling and this song is most likely little solace to that kind of heart break but I am sure it brought many a hurting heart back to their feelings of love. I know that loss is a part of life and many things pass us by but there are few tragedies greater than a life lost before it is lived.
This last song brings back lots of memories for me. Teenage years are tough and love is an even tougher part of that experience. When I think of this song, I think of the importance of love and how our partners center us and make us whole.
Thank you for reading this post and its first part as well. I hope that you had memory come back to you about how you felt when you heard these songs so many years ago. Music is such a powerful thing and had the ability to teleport us back to our youth. Please let me know what songs you would have included on this list.
listen During one of innumerable trips to my local vinyl emporium, I stumbled across a mysterious 45 on Jewel Records. Called "Christmas In Vietnam" and credited to Johnny and Jon, its pale blue label was hand-stamped "Nov 21 1968" on one side and "D.J. Sample" on the other. Plainly printed under the Jewel logo was " 1965," but I later learned the song was (despite appearances) released in 1966 - just as anti-war sentiments were beginning to peak in America. Johnny and Jon were (presumably) itinerant southern soul singers. Jewel (and its sister labels Paula and Sue) were based in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the two singers bore an uncanny resemblance to soul titans Sam and Dave (or, really, Mel & Tim - but they came later).
Mournful and slow (not, as one might expect, angry and fast), "Christmas In Vietnam" chronicled the sad story of thousands of young, Black men serving a lost cause on the opposite side of the world from their increasingly troubled homeland. Black men formed a disproportionate percentage of draftees and casualties in Vietnam, and this injustice fueled a growing sense of outrage in the Black community - both in the army and back at home. Literally speaking, this record tells the story of "two lonely soldiers fighting a war," but the scared, confused grunts in the song serve as metaphors for a whole generation. "It won't be merry this Christmastime," Johnny & Jon confide breathlessly, because "there's Vietcong all around me."
Needless to say, I was mesmerized. This was weird, riveting stuff that seemed to come out of nowhere. Amazingly, however, I've since discovered a number of other Christmas songs about America's conflict in Vietnam, and Johnny & Jon's "Christmas In Vietnam" - included on Rhino's Bummed Out Christmas (read more) and Paula's Merry Christmas Baby (read more) - was hardly the weirdest.
Actually, the role of music during wartime was well established by the turbulent sixties. The longing, the fear, and the bravery of soldiers and their loved ones were often reflected in popular songs during wars, and at least one Christmas song, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," played a significant role in World War II. Cowritten by Buck Ram (later the impresario behind the Platters), "I'll Be Home For Christmas" spoke - without ever specifically saying so - of the fierce homesickness that strikes at the heart of any soldier during the holiday season. Remember, the key lyric here isn't the title but the deftly worded conclusion, "if only in my dreams."
What set the Christmas songs of the Vietnam War apart was their naked honesty concerning the plight of the soldier. These guys weren't very happy to be there - at least, they didn't stay that way very long after going "in country." And, by the release of "Christmas In Vietnam," most American civilians were - in one way or another - dissatisfied with our role in Vietnam. Arch-conservative Ronald Reagan's infamous 1965 assertion that we could "pave the whole country... and be home by Christmas" was hardly a stamp of approval on President Lyndon Johnson's foreign policy. Hawks and hippies alike disapproved of our presence there, but no one felt the pain more than the boys in the foxholes.
Take, for instance, the hopelessly gung-ho recruit in Derrik Roberts' "There Won't Be Any Snow (Christmas In The Jungle)" (Roulette, 1965). Over a hokey, white-bread chorus (and gunshot sound effects recycled from old western movies), Roberts recites a letter to an unnamed sweetheart that sounds - in retrospect - stubbornly nave. "Some people think we're fools to be here," he admits, "but I feel that my being here is like taking out a little insurance for my future - our future." It hardly comes as a surprise when - get this - Roberts' protagonist gets fragged for Christmas!
It's worth noting, however, that Roberts actually recorded two versions of the record - one where the soldier dies, and another where he doesn't. According to press at the time, the public preferred the happy ending - predictably enough. But, at least in the unhappy version featured on Christmas Past (Westside, 1998), "There Won't Be Any Snow" is one of the most accidentally funny records I've ever heard. Still, it points directly towards the rift that would soon tear the country apart.
In my mind, Roberts' earnest patriot was probably a platoon leader, and he was most likely shot by his own men - grunts like Johnny and Jon - who resented of the danger he put them in daily as he struggled in futility to win the hearts and minds of the cagey Vietnamese. The attitudes that carried us to victory in earlier wars just didn't apply here; most American citizens - let alone soldiers - had trouble identifying the threat to our security. The Viet Cong, on the other hand, were quiet certain who the enemy was, and they fought like dogs to preserve their sovereignty.
listen Just a few years before (1963), Toni Wine cut a girl-group-flavored record for the Colpix label that speaks to how much the mood of the country had changed. In the early 60's, Wine was an in-demand session singer around the Brill Building, and she wrote the occasional song, later striking gold with "Groovy Kind Of Love" for the Mindbenders (1966) and "Candida" for Dawn (1970). And, she married noted record producer Chips Moman. Wine's self-penned ballad, "My Boyfriend's Coming Home For Christmas," doesn't actually mention Vietnam, but it's the sort of song (like the Shirelles' "Soldier Boy") that young girlfriends and wives had been turning into bestsellers for many years. "You see," Wine explains, "He's in the service, and you know how hard it is to let every boy go home at the same time." Wine is unabashedly proud of her boy and the job he's doing - she just misses his tender touch! "I'm not really mad at Uncle Sam," she insists, but that wouldn't always be the case once the body bags started piling up and America's view of the war grew ever more jaundiced. Both Roberts' and Wine's records are included on Christmas Past, a compilation of holiday tracks from the Roulette family of labels (read more).
listenBy 1967, the mood of the country had grown darker, and the citizenry was now deeply divided - so much so that the debate was rapidly turning violent. Into this maelstrom stepped five-year-old Becky Lamb - and some unbelievably cynical record tycoons - with "Little Becky's Christmas Wish" (Warner Brothers, 1967). In what one website described as a "kiddie death song," the adorable little Becky writes to Santa asking him to bring her big brother Tommy home for Christmas. As a child, Becky understands little of what she observes, but the listener (presumably) gets the picture: Tommy won't be coming home this Christmas or any other - he's been killed in Vietnam. Becky relates to St. Nick how Tommy played one record over and over (a copy of President Kennedy's "ask not what you can do" speech), and she describes how Tommy looked like a postman wearing his "green suit with great big gold buttons."