Talking Ben Tre
1968 · Columbia CS 9717 · New York City, New York
- Artist
- Pete Seeger
- Title
- Talking Ben Tre
- Release
- Pete Seeger Now
- Year
- 1968
- Label
- Columbia # CS 9717
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- New York City, New York, USA
- Genre
- Folk · Contemporary Folk
- Primary theme
- Peace, Protest & Anti-War
Annotation
The song "Talking Ben Tre" (Columbia Records # CS 9717), featured on the album Pete Seeger Now (Columbia Records # CS 9717). Lyrics by Jan Davidson, which appeared in Broadside Magazine # 93, July / August 1968. It told the story of a US platoon attacking a suspected "Viet Cong" village, and the devastating use of the napalm weapons. The reference to the Viet Cong, or "VC") was the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Vietnamese: Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) (NLFSV or NLF), the political and military resistance to the US and South Vietnamese government from within South Vietnam. Napalm of course referred to 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): "napalm, big bombs, real pretty, just like the 4th of July... we really cooked them Viet Cong". It noted the deaths of innocent civilians: "we burned about two thousand others, but they were just old folks, children and mothers".
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Annotation — Pete Seeger Songs
The song "Talking Ben Tre", featured on the album Pete Seeger Now (Columbia Records # CS 9717). Lyrics by Jan Davidson, which appeared in Broadside Magazine # 93, July / August 1968. It told the story of a US platoon attacking a suspected "Viet Cong" village, and the devastating use of the napalm weapons. The reference to the Viet Cong, or "VC") was the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Vietnamese: Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) (NLFSV or NLF), the political and military resistance to the US and South Vietnamese government from within South Vietnam. Napalm of course referred to 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): "napalm, big bombs, real pretty, just like the 4th of July... we really cooked them Viet Cong". It noted the deaths of innocent civilians: "we burned about two thousand others, but they were just old folks, children and mothers".
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Born 3 May 1919 in Manhattan, New York, USA, died on 27 January 2014, same location