Letter From a Teenage Son

Annotation

Next up as a response to Lundberg came the song "Letter From a Teenage Son" (Philips # 40503), which on 16 December 1967 bubbled under the Billboard 100, at # 120. The magazine reported on the track on 9 December 1967: "Backed by 21 members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Ravel's "Pavaanne", here is a cleverly thought out answer to Victor Lundberg's smash. Holds much interest, programming and sales appeal. The narration is well done and the thoughts conveyed add another dimension to the much recorded father-son debate".1 However, this went nowhere commercially, performing worse than the track above. The record sleeve featured a very smartly dressed young man, in shirt and jacket, with short hair (not the hippie character portrayed by Lundberg). The back cover displayed the lyrics of the track. The narrator attacked his father over the birth certificate / draft card issue as lacking in love and acceptance. He then explained that he did not want to burn his draft card, but that he had the right to do so under the freedom of expression principle. The narrator went on to criticise the loss of life in Vietnam: "the awful numbness of death in a distant jungle". Also of note is the reference to the voting age: "you say that I am free...but you forget, I'm not old enough to vote", an example of draft inequality.Sources1Billboard, 9 December 1967↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Dear dad, I want you to know that I love you and mother very much, but after reading your letter, I realised that you and I mean entirely different things when we use the word love. You say God is love, that my mother will love me no matter what but if I should burn my draft card I am no longer your son! How can you even speak of love when you don't even seem to understand that the very first step in giving love is to accept someone as he is not as you would like him to be. You say that I am free - that I have a voice in the government, but you forget, I'm not old enough to vote, you say you believe in your own rights, as well as the rights of others, yet you refuse to even listen to what I believe is the natural pursuit of my rights, doesn't the real test of a free nation and its democracy lie in the rights of its people to question their government? You say I'm ungrateful to this country, that has given me so much, that I doubt the principles upon which it was founded, that's not true at all, it's just that I doubt some of our new founded principles. I live to see the day when people no longer think war is necesary, oh, I'll support any country fighting for the right to govern itself, but I'm no willing to lose my life in some far-off country when many of their own young men are unwilling to fight and die for their country. No father, I won't embarrass you or mother by burning my draft card but I reserve the right to express what I feel in my heart. If I have to…

Notes

Philips 40503 (1-40705), white-label "Promotional Copy – Not for Sale", mono version, "An Empire Production"; "Letter From a Teenage Son" (M. Sweeney), 2:49, Vapac Music Inc. & MRC Music Inc. (BMI); Brandon Wade, orchestra conducted by David Carroll. Picture sleeve front shows a black-and-white portrait of a young man with the title and "narrated by Brandon Wade with an appropriate musical background." The back prints the full text of the letter, beginning "Dear Dad:" and signed "Your Son": the son rejects his father's idea of love, insists on the right to question the government, says he will not burn his draft card and will go if he must fight, but asks his father not to let "the sound of taps" silence those who ask "why?". Back also prints © 1967 Vapac Music Co. (BMI), M.R.C. Music Inc. (BMI); "Philips Records/A Division of Mercury Record Productions, Inc. Vendor: Mercury Record…

About the artist

Brandon Wade was a 16-year-old vocalist whose spoken-word 'Letter From a Teenage Son' (Philips 40503, 1967), the answer record to Victor Lundberg's 'An Open Letter to My Teenage Son', reached No. 120 on Billboard's Bubbling Under chart, backed by the David Carroll orchestra. [Source: Wikipedia; Discogs]

Themes

Anti-War · Draft · Answer to Open Letter

In collections

Lundberg's "An Open Letter" & Answer Songs · Draft Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]