Everybody Is Crying About Vietnam

Annotation — Blues songs

The song "Everybody Crying About Vietnam" (Scout # SC-1) by J.B. Lenoir - an alternative version of "Vietnam Blues" - recorded live during a European tour with the American Folk Blues Festival, October 1965, in Hamburg, Germany. However, it looks like the producers and record label owners, Horst Lippman and Johannes Rau, did not release this record until around 1968-69. The original studio version "Vietnam Blues", recorded in 1966, first appeared on the 1970 album Crusade (Polydor # 24-4011) - discussed below. The lyrics of the two songs are fairly similar, although Lenoir went into more detail about Civil Rights legislation. He posed the question to the president: "if you don't want to give us our Civil Rights, why do you send us to fight?". This represented the connection between Civil Rights / race relations and the role of African-Americans in Vietnam. It also included a spoken word introduction, in which Lenoir imagined the sounds of war. Note: this is different to the J.B. Lenoir song "Vietnam" which featured on the 1965 album Alabama Blues (CBS # 62593), discussed above.

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

About the artist

American blues singer and guitarist, born 5 March 1929 in Monticello, Mississippi; noted for topical protest blues ('Vietnam Blues', 'Alabama Blues'); died 29 April 1967 in Urbana, Illinois, of injuries from a car accident. [Source: Wikipedia]

Themes

Anti-War · Civil Rights

In collections

Blues songs · Civil Rights Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]