Susannes
Folksong-Notizen
[1967:] Art Buchwald, the Washington, D.C.
political satirist, wrote a now-classic column
not too long ago entitled "President
Goldwater". In it he spoke of his great
relief at Goldwater's defeat, for if Goldwater
had won, trembled Buchwald, the war in Viet-Nam
might have been escalated. Bombers from Guam
might be dropping their payloads in the North and
thousands more G.I.s might be poured into the
conflict. Thank goodness a man with policies like
that was repudiated by the public and we had
instead a rational and peace-loving president:
Lyndon B. Johnson. (Tom Paxton in Reprint Sing
Out 10, 222)
-
1976:] One [of the] most interesting tracks on the album is Goodman's totally unaccompanied version of 'The Ballad Of Penny Evans'. Why did he record a protest song about Vietnam? "It wasn't meant to be as such, it was just that nobody writes about anybody that's left at home. There was a point where I met a person who actually told me that story, and I was impressed with it enough that I went back - it was in Rochester, New York, and I was playing in a place called The Nugget Pizza Palace, and that's the truth! [...] I was playing there and this girl actually told me the story. I'd heard Louis Killen sing 'The Flying Cloud' a couple of times, and when I went back to the hotel to write the song, it was to the tune of 'The Flying Cloud' with the exception of a few notes. It scanned like it, so I decided that rather than making something up that wouldn't be half as appropriate, it sounded like that kind of time, and that was how that happened. In fact, she lives in Boston now, she's re-married. At one point, I wasn't sure that she'd been telling me all the facts, or she might have made up some of it, or imagined it before she even told it to me, but I guess that wasn't the case, and it turns out it was all pretty much the way it was told to me. I've since met a couple of people who were in the same situation, so I guess that's who the song's for. The only reason I still do it is not because I feel like I have anything I want to say to anybody - one of the things I'm really trying to avoid is preaching." (Steve Goodman, London interview published in the Omaha Rainbow, 1987, quoted by John Tobler, 1990, The united Kingdom Interviews)
For further info on the Vietnam war see Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation
|