Where Have All Our Heroes Gone
1970 · Decca 32744 · USA
- Artist
- Bill Anderson
- Title
- Where Have All Our Heroes Gone
- Release
- Where Have All Our Heroes Gone / Loving a Memory
- Year
- 1970
- Label
- Decca # 32744
- Format
- 7" · Single
- Language
- English
- Country
- USA
- Songwriter
- Bill Anderson / Bill Talbert
- Genre
- Country · Country
- Primary theme
- US 'Patriotic' / Pro-Government / Anti-Protest Songs
Annotation
Anderson (born 1937, Columbia, South Carolina) a hugely successful pop-country singer and songwriter, based in Nashville, Tennessee, released the song "Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?" (Decca Records # 32744) which attacked the protest movement, arguing that the demonstrators set a bad example to the next generation. (1) The narrator felt "sick to my stomach" because the "now generation" admired left-wing radicals. He praised people from the past, such Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and Joe DiMaggio. Anderson particularly drew attention to Winston Churchill, whose "two fingers raised together meant victory, not just 'let your enemy have it all' kind of peace" - i.e. comparing those protesting against the Vietnam War to appeasers before World War Two, and that Churchill's 'V for victory' meant more than the two-fingered 'peace sign' used by demonstrators. He also criticised an unnamed "communist" folk singer who did not pay taxes - presumably a reference to Joan Baez, who refused, from 1964, to pay 60% of her taxes, which went to the Department of Defense. Baez declared that "weapons and wars have murdered, burned, distorted, crippled", and thus she called herself a 'war…
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
This is country star James William 'Whisperin' Bill' Anderson, born 1 November 1937 in Columbia, South Carolina - Decca hitmaker and Grand Ole Opry member; he took 'Where Have All Our Heroes Gone' into the country top ten in 1970 and issued a Decca album of the same title. [Source: Wikipedia; Discogs]