Artist Champion Jack Dupree

Release Legacy of the Blues, Vol. 3

Year 1972

Label Sonet # SNTF 626

Format LP · Album

Country UK: England

Language English

Songs here 2 in the archive

1972 · Album · Sonet # SNTF 626 · UK: England

Champion Jack Dupree - born William Thomas Dupree (c.1910-1992) in New Orleans, he played blues piano in the boogie-woogie style, mainly based in Chicago, Illinois. He lived in London and worked in Europe through most of the 1960s. He sung about drugs, drink, and jail, as well as writing many political songs about US presidents (such as FDR, Truman and Kennedy) and the Civil Rights movement (including a composition about Martin Luther King). He recorded this album at Morgan Sound Studios, Willesden, Northwest London in 1971, and released in the UK in 1972 for Sonet (# SNTF 626). Released in the US in 1974 (GNP Crescendo Records # GNPS 10013).¹ The 2004 CD reissue ... (Verve Records) included an alternative take of the Vietnam song discussed below. The recordings featured Peter Curtley (guitar); Paul Rowan (harmonica); Hughie Flint (drums).

The song "Vietnam Blues" took an anti-war position. Dupree felt sympathy for "the people over in Vietnam" who suffered a "lot of pain" . He wanted the US government to "leave those poor people alone" and to "pull out and go home" . He believed that the war would "never end" and that the Vietnamese had a lot of friends: "the Chinese...the North Koreans, the Russians...and they got me too" . Dupress also sung about the pain felt by the mothers of US soldiers. It included a Civil Rights message, with a small line on the treatment of African-Americans in the US, saying that the Vietnamese had a problem "just like a got at home" - this coming from a man who left the US to live in Europe partly because of these issues.

The alternative version of the song, recorded during the same session as above, but not released until the 2004 CD re-issue, had some different interesting lyrics. Dupree called US action in Vietnam a "low down dirty shame" and that there "ain't no justice" . He warned the government that "you can't win every war" . Dupree also addressed the draft, saying that people "got no chance" , and would have to "dig" their "own grave" . He sung that "I'm so glad I was too old" to be drafted!

The songs