Artist Phil Ochs

Release I Ain't Marching Anymore

Year 1965

Label Elektra # EKS 7287

Format LP · Album

Country USA

Language English

Songs here 2 in the archive

1965 · Album · Elektra # EKS 7287 · USA

Phil Ochs, a leading protest / topical singer, born 19 December 1940 in El Paso, Texas, USA, and died on 9 April 1976, in Far Rockaway, New York, USA. He often played songs at anti-war and civil rights rallies in the 1960s and early 1970s, including outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968.¹ He released many anti-Vietnam War songs during the era, which included "Talking Vietnam" , one of the first Vietnam songs released, on his 1964 album All the News That's Fit to Sing. Other prominent songs included "I Ain't Marching Anymore" , "Draft Dodger Rag" , and "Days of Decision" on I Ain't Marching Anymore (1965), "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land" and "The War Is Over" on Tape From California (1968), "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" , "Where Were You in Chicago" and "Another Age" on Rehearsals for Retirement (1969), "What Are You Fighting For" , on Sings for Broadside (1976), the single Here's to the State of Richard Nixon (1974), and spoken-word tracks on the album Interviews With Phil Ochs (1976). He also recorded the song "We Seek No Wider War" in 1965, which appeared on the compilation The Best of Broadside 1962-1988 (2000).

The song "Draft Dodger Rag" (Elektra Records # EKS 7287), a satirical anti-war song that became an anthem of the peace movement in the 1960s, reached a more mainstream audience than other contemporary folk anti-war tracks, and several artists covered the song (although it made little commercial impact). Before the release of this 1965 album, Ochs performed the song at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival (23-26 July) - the live recording featured on the LP Newport Folk Festival 1964: Evening Concerts - Vol. 1 (Vanguard Records # VRS-9184). Broadside subsequently published the lyrics and notation in the # 53 edition, 20 December 1964. In the song, Ochs listed every conceivable excuse available for somebody to avoid the draft. But firstly, it started with a young man expressing his hate of communism: "I knew better dead than red" , and thus his patriotism:

But when the draftee gets to the draftboard, the excuses started to pour out - drug addiction, enrollment in full-time education, a full-time carer for his disabled aunt, asthma, allergies, poor eyesight, working in a key defense industry, and the suggestion of being a homosexual ( "I always carry a purse" ). At the end, the draftee re-affirmed his hate of the communists, hoping that Chou En Lai would die (the Premier of the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976). However, he only wanted to go to "a war without any gore" .

Covers

• Chad Mitchell Trio - Draft Dodger Rag (1964: Mercury # SR 60949)
  
• The Moonshiners - Draft Dodger Rag (1965: Village Gate # VLG 104)
  
• Denis Gibbons - National Service Blues (Draft Dodger Blues) (1965: W&G # 2594)
  
• Pete Seeger - The Draft Dodger Rag (1966: Columbia # 4-43699)
  
• Four in the Morning - Draft Dodger Rag (Crossroad # 7001)
  
• John Berry - Draft Dodger (Sound Inc. # S1-180)
  
• The Apples - Draft Dodgers Rag (Act 1 # 715)

The songs