Billy Bizor with Lightnin' Hopkins
Vietnam War
1969 · Home Cooking HCS 111 · USA
- Artist
- Billy Bizor with Lightnin' Hopkins
- Title
- Vietnam War
- Release
- Blowing My Blues Away
- Year
- 1969
- Label
- Home Cooking # HCS 111
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Genre
- Blues · Blues
- Primary theme
- Home Front Perspective / Soldier's Perspective
Annotation
The bluesman Billy Bizor, born in Centerville, Texas in 1913, released the track "Vietnam War" (Home Cooking LP 111) - the same song, but a different recording of "Viet Nam War (Pt. 1) & (Pt.2)" by Lightnin' Hopkins on the album Talkin' Some Sense (Jewel Records # LPS 5001), discussed below. This track, recorded on 15 April 1968 at the ACA Recording Studio in Houston, Texas, just a year before he died in April 1969 (in the same city), also featured his cousin Hopkins (lead vocals and electric guitar). Bizor on the harmonica, and the very faint piano playing by Elmore Nixon. The lyrics told a heartfelt conversation between a mother and her son on the home front in the US. The son pondered whether his brother, in Vietnam, might earn money in the army, hoping that he could send it home. But the mother told him that "ain't no way" to talk about his brother. Moreover, Uncle Sam might call him up next. The song referenced President Johnson (LBJ) sending people to war. Suggested by Pablinchi.
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Billy Bizor (1913-1969), born near Middleton, Leon County, Texas, was a blues harmonica player and singer, a cousin of Lightnin' Hopkins whom he backed on record through the 1960s; his solo sides for producer Roy C. Ames, including 'Vietnam War' (recorded 1968), were issued in 1989 as 'Blowing My Blues Away' (Home Cooking). He died at Ben Taub Hospital, Houston in April 1969. [Source: Wikipedia; Stefan Wirz discography]