Hitler Ain't Dead

Annotation

Frederick took a hard-line with LBJ in the song "Hitler Ain't Dead", comparing him to Hitler!: "There's an army marching in the world today...Christian and pure, fresh and clean...just a few more reds to exterminate...a few more dollars that have to be made". This one appeared in Broadside Magazine # 61, 15 August 1965. The song "R. and R." - this stood for "Relax and Recuperation" - took a comedy tone about getting time off from the army: "the war in Vietnam is very nice...live in mud up to your waist...back in Saigon our lieutenant carries on with local whores...back in my home town my girl runs around with my best friend". The first song on the album was called "Ship Ahoy". It took the view that it was time for the US to disengage from Vietnam - the title suggested jumping on a boat home: "They sent us here to fight the Vietcong...it's time we got out...Ship Ahoy...out to sea, fill the fuel tank, no more Vietnam for me". Finally, the track "Quiet Sound", a slow melancholy, sad tune, focused on the lack of success of the anti-war demonstrations in Washington D.C., and turned its attention to the White House: "on the hill lives a man with iron will...raise some sons for him to kill...women walk around and around, marched a hundred times before...never stopped a war".

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Leave us alone! Leave us alone! / Just find yourself a country of your own / Kick my boots and kiss my hand / And I might not bomb your land / Go to sleep and stop you mischief little man... / Once there was a saviour and he lived in old Saigon / And the people really loved our man Diem / Cardinal Spellman gave him power / Helped along by Eisenhower... / Then the Generals took over and took over / There were coups and counter coups most every week / But we honoured our commitment / We never missed a shipment / If we had they would have sold us up the creek / But the Vietcong surprised / They almost terrorised us / Did you know their average age is seventeen?... / We are loosing badly on the ground / So we go to the air and we drop a couple thousand bombs a day / But the peasants slowly funnel into the commie tunnels / Oh how I wish the reds would go away / Now we want negotiations to secure this little nation / And keep the communists out of here / In Saigon we want a friend / Let me see who shall we send / Hubert Humphrey isn't doing muchb this year

Notes

Crisis Records, 1610 Wandering Drive, Monterey Park, Calif.; front cover titled "Hey, Hey... LBJ! and other Songs of the U.S. Antiwar Movement sung by Bill Frederick" over a photograph of a large antiwar march with banners reading "Bring the Troops Home" and "Jobs, Homes, Schools – War No More". The back cover, headed "Comes Along Bill Frederick Declaring Peace on War" ("This is a Sing-In! This is a Wry Eye on the Number One Guy"), carries two photographs of Frederick with guitar and sleeve notes signed Joyce Ann Miller with a short paragraph on each song: "Ship Ahoy" grew from a heckler's question at an anti-war demonstration; "Empty" is an interview with an individual Vietnamese citizen; "The Dean Rusk Song" quotes the New York Times of 26 January 1966; "Hitler Ain't Dead" arose from the Dominican crisis; "Just Another Day" from student demonstrations against germ-warfare research at…

About the artist

Folk singer prominent on the New York folk scene in the 1960s; performed at antiwar demonstrations and released the LP Hey, Hey... LBJ! And Other Songs of the U.S. Antiwar Movement (1967). [Source: Journal of Texas Music History (VWSP article); History Today; Discogs] The sleeve notes to his LP describe him as a twenty-four-year-old Philadelphian with a physics degree, working toward a Ph.D. in molecular biology and performing at teach-ins, rallies and coffee houses on the Eastern Seaboard.

Themes

Anti-War

In collections

Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]