Guitar Slim Green

This War Ain't Right

1970 · Kent KST-549 · Los Angeles, California

Artist
Guitar Slim Green
Title
This War Ain't Right
Release
Stone Down Blues
Year
1970
Label
Kent # KST-549
Format
LP · Album
Language
English
Country
Los Angeles, California, USA
Songwriter
Johnny Otis
Genre
Blues · Electric Blues
Primary theme
Peace, Protest & Anti-War

Annotation

Guitar Slim Green, obscure blues artist, born on 25 July 1907 in Bryan, Texas, USA, and died 28 September 1975 in Los Angeles, California, USA. The song "This War Ain't Right" (Kent Records # KST-549) composed by Johnny Otis, takes an anti-war position, describing the conflict as a "lowdown dirty shame". It notes the incursion into Cambodia under the Nixon-era, which re-stirred the anti-war movement: "I got a brother in Cambodia, and I got one dead in Vietnam". Like some of the other blues & soul songs of the era, the song looked at the issue of Civil Rights and the treatment of African-American in the US, with the narrator noting "I've got to go kill a brown man for the white man".

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

About the artist

born on 25 July 1907 in Bryan, Texas, USA, and died 28 September 1975 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Themes

Anti-War · Civil Rights · Cambodia · Nixon

In collections

Blues songs · Civil Rights Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs