Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam) Part 2
1970 · Flying Dutchman FD 26009 · East St. Louis, Illinois
- Artist
- Leon Thomas
- Title
- Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam) Part 2
- Release
- Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam) Part 1 / Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam) Part 2
- Year
- 1970
- Label
- Flying Dutchman # FD 26009
- Format
- 7" · Single
- Language
- English
- Country
- East St. Louis, Illinois, USA
- Songwriter
- Leon Thomas
- Genre
- Jazz · Free Jazz · Vocal Jazz
- Primary theme
- Peace, Protest & Anti-War
Annotation — Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs
Leon Thomas, born on 4 October 1937 in East Saint-Louis, Illinois, USA, and died on 8 May 1999 in New York, USA, an American Avant-Garde Jazz musician, released the song "Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam)" (Flying Dutchman # FD 26009), split into two tracks across this single. It featured on the 1969 album Spirits Known and Unknown (Flying Dutchman # FD-10115). The single received limited coverage in Billboard magazine.1 This song had a blues structure and tone, taking a strong anti-war position: "it’s a dirty mean war". The narrator declared "you can throw me in jail, but I ain’t goin’ to Vietnam". The song particularly took note of the use of napalm and its indiscriminate use: "got to drop some napalm... never see the guy he’s got to kill" - chemical weapon Napalm B - a jellied gasoline mixture, with polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline. Declared a war-crime since 1980, the US government extensively used this weapon during the Vietnam conflict, dropping 388,000 tons on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.2345Sources1Billboard, 8 May 1999↩2Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩3Times Higher Education: Napalm an american biography by robert m neer↩4Napalm, An American Biography (book website)↩5The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam (Tom Wells, 2005)↩
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Notes
Flying Dutchman FD 26009, vocal, white promotional labels marked "Promotional — Not for Sale", 45 RPM; "A Product of Flying Dutchman Productions Ltd., 65 W. 55th St., New York 10019", "Distributed by Mainstream Records, Inc.", made in USA. "Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam) Part I" (Leon Thomas), Nuwaupu Publishing, ASCAP, 2:35, master no. ZTSP 148895/63749; "Part II" (Leon Thomas), 1:33, master no. ZTSP 148896/63749A. [From the record sleeve and labels]
About the artist
Born 4 October 1937, East St. Louis, Illinois, USA. Jazz and blues vocalist noted for his yodel-like glottal technique; sang on Pharoah Sanders' The Creator Has a Master Plan and recorded the Vietnam-referencing Damn Nam (Ain't Goin' to Vietnam). Died 8 May 1999, New York City, USA. [Source: Wikipedia]
Themes
In collections
Blues songs · Draft Songs · Jazz Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]