Letter From My Darling
1968 · Excello 2298 · USA
- Artist
- Kip Anderson
- Title
- Letter From My Darling
- Release
- Letter From My Darling / Watch You Work It Out
- Year
- 1968
- Label
- Excello # 2298
- Format
- 7" · Single
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Songwriter
- David Butler
- Genre
- Soul, Gospel & Funk · Soul
- Primary theme
- Home Front Perspective / Soldier's Perspective
Annotation
Southern soul singer Kip Anderson took the letter format in the 1968 song "Letter From My Darling" (Excello Records # 2298). Born Kipling Taquana Anderson (1938-2007) in Starr, South Carolina, he started his recording career with the small Derrick Records, founded by Charles Derrik, releasing the 1959 single "I Wanna Be the Only One". It was then leased out to the larger Vee-Jay Records. Ten years later, Derrik produced this emotional Vietnam track, in which a "lonely soldier" receives the "sweetest letter" from his girl, saying "I love you, faithfully...even though we are far apart". As the trumpets and strings build toward the end of the song, the girlfriend tells the soldier "I'm gonna kiss your picture, but I just wish it was you." So the song is a good representation of mail call time in Vietnam, as well as displaying the loneliness of both the soldier and those back home. Billboard ran an advert promoting the single on 27 April 1968.
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Kip Anderson (born Kipling Taquana Anderson, 24 January 1938 in Starr, Anderson County, South Carolina; died 29 August 2007 in Anderson, South Carolina, aged 69) was an American deep soul, blues and R&B singer, keyboard player and songwriter whose recording career spanned nearly four decades across Derrick, Vee Jay, Sharp, Everlast, ABC, Tomorrow, True Spot, Chess, Checker, Excello, Lorna, Ichiban and Ripete, and who earned his living principally as a radio disc jockey; he shared stages with Sam Cooke, the Drifters, Jerry Butler and Jackie Wilson, took his best-known side with the 1967 'A…