Doctor Slap's Man Is Born

Annotation

The song "Doctor Slap's Man Is Born" (U.S.A. Records # 103), released in 1971, took an anti-war perspective. It told of children been born into a "world twisted and torn...divided, struggling to exist". The child is taught to love and not kill, yet they are sent "off to war". It ended with a mother crying "cause her son is dying, killed in a land". Jackie Ross, born in St. Louis, Missouri (30 January 1946), where she started out as a gospel singer, moved to Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1950s. Ross signed to the famous Chicago blues label Chess Records scoring a hit in 1964 with the single Selfish One.1Sources1Chicago Soul (Robert Pruter, 1992)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — Soul, Gospel, & Funk Songs

The song "Doctor Slap's Man Is Born" (U.S.A. Records # 103), released in 1971, took an anti-war perspective. It told of children been born into a "world twisted and torn...divided, struggling to exist". The child is taught to love and not kill, yet they are sent "off to war". It ended with a mother crying "cause her son is dying, killed in a land". Jackie Ross, born in St. Louis, Missouri (30 January 1946), where she started out as a gospel singer, moved to Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1950s. Ross signed to the famous Chicago blues label Chess Records scoring a hit in 1964 with the single Selfish One.1 Sources1Chicago Soul (Robert Pruter, 1992)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Doctor Slaps, and new life is born into a world twisted and torn / So innocent, he doesn't know what kind of world it is / Already he's made nineteen / Since the doctor slapped, he don't like what he seen / A world divided, struggling to exist / Someone tell him he got to be a man / Send him off to war, put a gun in his hand / To kill men he don't even know / All of his life he'd been told how to behave... / You have to love, you mustn't kill / But now they let him / Doctor slaps, a new life is born / A mother cries cause her son is dying / Killed in a land, killed by a man he's never seen

Notes

U.S.A. Records USA 103, also numbered C3005A, stereo, "Produced by U.S.A. Records - Chicago 5, Illinois", with a stars-and-stripes label and a map of the United States; "Doctor Slap's Man Is Born" (J. VanLeer), 2:50, VanLeer Music, BMI. [From the record sleeve and labels]

About the artist

Jaculyn Bless 'Jackie' Ross (born 30 January 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American soul singer who began performing at the age of three on her preacher parents' gospel radio programme, moved to Chicago after her father's death in 1954, and was recruited by Sam Cooke for his SAR label, debuting with 'Hard Times' in 1962. Signing to Chess Records in 1964, she scored her defining hit with 'Selfish One', a number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by the album 'Full Bloom'; disenchanted over royalties and disputed masters, she left Chess in 1967 and recorded subsequently for…

Themes

Anti-War

In collections

Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years] · Soul, Gospel, & Funk Songs