Agent Orange
1982 · Folkways FW 8563 · USA
- Artist
- Peggy Seeger
- Title
- Agent Orange
- Release
- From Where I Stand: Topical Songs from America and England
- Year
- 1982
- Label
- Folkways # FW 8563
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Songwriter
- Muriel Hogan
- Genre
- Folk · Contemporary Folk
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation
Peggy Seeger, born in New York (17 June 1935), and half-sister to the famous Pete Seeger. She released the contemporary folk song "Agent Orange" (Folkways Records # FW 8563), which looked at the defoliant used by the US during the Vietnam conflict, a chemical which had long term negative health effects, and is frequently referenced in the post-war songs. There are two major sections to the song. In the first part, we hear about the story of a man volunteering to fight in Vietnam because he thought "that Uncle Sam was right". The second part of the song gets down to the agent orange issue, which the narrator describes as "some fancy tricks". The recurring theme is that the Vietnam veteran did in fact die in Vietnam - through agent orange giving him cancer many years later - although he did not know it at the time: "It killed me in Vietnam and I didn't even know". It also gave his son a birth defect:
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Lyrics
English: Well I was 17, a great big kid the year I enlisted / I can't recall just why I did, my mum says that I insisted / I had a strange idea then that Uncle Sam was right / Mum she cried, signed the card, and I went off to fight / Got off the plane at Vietnam, it didn't seem like war / With all I saw I started wondering what we come there for / The officers got drunk at night, cheated on their wives / Those guys on the other side were fighting for their lives The army tried some fancy tricks to bring them to their knees / Like agent orange defoliants to clear the brush and trees / We'd fly above the trail all day in clouds of poison spray / I never thought that chemical would take my life today / But I just found out this morning, the doctor told me so / It killed me in Vietnam and I didn't even know / I tried very hard to forget that war like everybody else did / I settled down with Kathy, we tried to raise some kids / Our little son has birth defects... / Agent orange came home with us, we carry it with us still / It stay inside for years and years before it starts to kill / You might get cancer of the liver, you might get cancer of the skin... / I've never been a radical but this has changed my mind... / You killed our dad in Vietnam and you didn't even know
About the artist
American folk singer, born 17 June 1935 in New York City; long based in Britain. [Source: Wikipedia]