Saigon Warrior

Annotation — Australian & New Zealand Songs

The ultimate Vietnam War compilation, released by Bear Family Records, it includes 13 discs, 334 tracks, and a 304 page booklet. In fact you can spend 16 hours and 49 minutes listening to Vietnam War songs if you like. Hugo Keesing, a popular music collector and teacher (formerly at the University of Maryland) produced the compilation, and help to find, select, and evaluate most the songs included - his personal collection of Vietnam War songs stretches into the thousands. Also see The Keesing Collection on Popular Music and Culture.1 It is split into various themes, such as veterans, the patriotic, the draft, the protest movement, the plight of the soldiers etc. The compilation included a few songs from Australia. One of those is particularly significant - "Saigon Warrior" performed by Maggie, an unknown Australian artist, recorded in-country during the war - one of the rare female performances from the Vietnam War. According to the article "Songs of the Vietnam War: An Occupational Folklore Tradition", by Dr. Les Cleveland (1986)1: According to the 1991 compilation In Country: Folk Songs of Americans in the Vietnam War, compiled Lydia Fish, which featured a version by US veteran…

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Notes

Disc 7, track 6 of the 13-CD box (Germany, 2010; produced by Hugo Keesing). Recorded in-country in April 1967 from a tape given to Saul Broudy by the pilot Gene Easley; one of the rare female performances from the war. To the tune of "Sweet Betsy From Pike"; a variant of "The Lousy Lance-Corporal".

About the artist

Maggie - Australian singer, otherwise unidentified, recorded at a song competition at the 17th Aviation Group headquarters, Nha Trang, April 1967.

Themes

Soldier's Perspective · Satire · Saigon · Military · In Country

In collections

Australian & New Zealand Songs