Mothers, Daughters, Wives
1984 · Redwood RR3100 · Coffs Harbour, Australia
- Artist
- Judy Small
- Title
- Mothers, Daughters, Wives
- Release
- Mothers, Daughters, Wives
- Year
- 1984
- Label
- Redwood # RR3100
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- Coffs Harbour, Australia
- Songwriter
- Judy Small
- Genre
- Folk · Contemporary Folk
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation — Australian & New Zealand Songs
Judy Small, contemporary folk artist, born in 1953 in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia. This album featured the song "Mothers, Daughters, Wives" (Redwood Records # RR3100), which looked at the impact of the war on the home front, as men "marched away with drums and guns". She said that: "written in 1982, I wrote this song for my mother... and for all the women of her generation who, it seemed to me, spent a large part of their lives waiting for their menfolk to come home from war. They were the women whose work during World War II showed us that women could do any kind of job and were perfectly capable of independence" - from the Judy Small Songbook.1 The narrator first experienced war as a daughter, has her father went to war, and her mother scoured the "papers... and lists of dead". Next, she had grown-up, and married, and it was her husband off to war. In the final section of the song, "daughters grew to women, and your little boys to men", and they "bravely waved goodbye", marching off to war. There are several cover versions of this song, including by John Schumann on the album Behind the Lines (2008), and by Danny Spooner on the album Emerging Tradition (2007).…
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Notes
Written 1982; covered by John Schumann (Behind the Lines, 2008) and Danny Spooner (Emerging Tradition, 2007).
About the artist
Judy Small - contemporary folk singer-songwriter, born 1953 in Coffs Harbour, NSW.
Themes
Home Front Perspective · WW1 · WW2 · Women's Liberation · Anti-War · LGBTQ+