King Henry

Annotation

Less well-known anti-war / protest from Seeger, the song "King Henry" on Dangerous Songs!? (CBS # 62751). It featured in Broadside Magazine # 58 under the title "I Mind My Own Business", p. 4. Seeger noted: "the quote in the 5th verse is from an actual letter from a US 'adviser' to his wife, a week before he was killed in Viet Nam". It's dated 1965, and to the tune of "Old Ballad Melody". It looked at the perspective of a soldier drafted to war and killed in action (K.I.A.): "drafted in sixty-three... he wrote this last month, last week he was dead". It argued that the war was virtually unwinnable: "we'll have to flatten the country... all gutted and spattered with napalm" - a reference to 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. (1) (2) (3) The song also noted the prominence of T.V. ("television war") - a reflection on both the media portrayal of the war, and the delivery of war images directly into the homes of Americans in the 1960s: "on T.V. some general says 'we must be…

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Notes

Also known as "I Mind My Own Business", Broadside Magazine # 58

About the artist

Born 3 May 1919 in Manhattan, New York, USA, died on 27 January 2014, same location

Themes

Anti-War · Draft · Napalm · TV War

In collections

Draft Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs · Pete Seeger Songs