Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago · 5 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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MUSIC HISTORY: Songs About Historical Events

MUSIC HISTORY: Songs About Historical Events

BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, JAN. 8, 1815

Teanesseans and ChOCIWS poe of rifleme
5 10d Choctaws.

    

Cypress swamp

Jones’ attack

   
  

 

PAKENHAM

Chalmette 5

= D- Craens

Pantation
(burned ruins)

“® Highlanders/
Keane's attack

This week, let's listen to a few songs that were composed to tell the story of an event.


"Sink the Bismarck" is a march song by country music singer Johnny Horton and songwriter Tillman Franks, based on the pursuit and eventual sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941, during World War II.

Horton released this song through Columbia Records in 1960, when it reached number 3 on the charts. It was inspired by the 1960 British war movie Sink the Bismarck! and was in fact (with the producer John Brabourne's approval) commissioned from Johnny Horton by 20th Century Fox who were worried about the subject's relative obscurity. While the song was used in U.S. theatre trailers for the film, it was not used in the film itself.



"Abraham, Martin and John" is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and first recorded by Dion. It was written in response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in April and June 1968, respectively.

This song contains many references to four men who were very important figures in civil rights history: Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a baptist minister who decided to show the world that peace is a better solution; and both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. The song talks about how they are still needed in spite of the fact that they were all assassinated.

Although it was quite unlike the rock sound that Dion had become famous for in the early 1960s, nonetheless it was a major American hit single in late 1968. It reached number 4 on the U.S. pop singles chart and was awarded a gold record for selling a million copies. In Canada, it topped the charts, reaching number 1.



The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock—was a music festival attracting an audience of over 400,000 people, scheduled over three days on a dairy farm in New York from August 15 to 17, but ultimately ran four days long, ending August 18, 1969.

Billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the “50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll”.

The event was captured in the Academy Award winning 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for both Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Matthews Southern Comfort. In 2017 the festival site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Though Joni didn't appear at Woodstock due to her manager thinking it was more important for her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show, she wrote the song after realizing that she missed out on playing this historical festival.



Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was a middleweight boxer who was wrongfully convicted of a triple murder and later released following a petition of habeas corpus after spending almost 20 years in prison.

In 1966, police arrested both Carter and friend John Artis for a triple-homicide committed in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and Artis, also in the car, to the scene of the crime. On searching the car, the police found ammunition that fit the weapons used in the murder. Police took no fingerprints at the crime scene and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test for gunshot residue. Carter and Artis were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, and both served time in Rahway State Prison. After the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, which he wrote while he was in prison, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter). From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.



"The Battle of New Orleans" is a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. The song describes the 1815 Battle of New Orleans from the perspective of an American soldier. It tells the tale of the battle with a light tone and provides a rather comical version of what actually happened at the battle. It was regarded with derision in Britain as the British forces withdrew from the battle after heavy losses had put victory out of the question. The British lost 2,036 men, while the Americans under command of future president Andrew Jackson lost only 71.

It has been recorded by many artists, but the singer most often associated with this song is Johnny Horton. His version scored number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. It was very popular with teenagers in the late 50's/early 60's in an era mostly dominated by rock and roll music.

In Billboard magazine's rankings of the top songs in the first 50 years of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, "The Battle of New Orleans" was ranked as the 28th song overall and the number-one country music song to appear on the chart.

The melody is based on a well-known American fiddle tune, "The 8th of January," which was the date of the Battle of New Orleans. Jimmy Driftwood, a school principal in Arkansas with a passion for history, set an account of the battle to this music in an attempt to get students interested in learning history. It seemed to work, and Driftwood became well known in the region for his historical songs. He was "discovered" in the late 1950s by Don Warden, and eventually was given a recording contract by RCA, for whom he recorded 12 songs in 1958, including "The Battle of New Orleans."



"American Pie" is a song by American folk rock singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was a number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972. In the UK, the single reached number 2 on its original 1972 release and a reissue in 1991 reached number 12. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached number 1 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

The repeatedly mentioned "the day the music died" refers to the 1959 plane crash which killed early rock and roll performers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. (The crash was not known by that name until after McLean's song became a hit.)

Except to acknowledge that he first learned about Buddy Holly's death on February 3, 1959—McLean was age 13—when he was folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 4, 1959 (the line "February made me shiver/with every paper I'd deliver"), McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song's lyrics; he has said: "They're beyond analysis. They're poetry." The meaning of the other lyrics has long been debated, and for decades, McLean declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned. However, the overall theme of the song is the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation as symbolized by the plane crash which claimed the lives of three of its heroes.

In 2017, McLean's original recording was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant".


Thanks for listening. Hope to see you again next time when we take a journey back in Music History.

(Information used in this post from Wikipedia and hustonpress.com/music.)



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Dominique "Nik" Petersen is an aficionado of old music and the author of Dr. Hook and Me: A Fan's Journal/Scrapbook. Read about it and her other books at the website:

NikDesignsGraphics.com

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Comments

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #6

#8
I misunderstood your first post, John Vaughan I see now what you mean. Perhaps in the early 60s, young people liked the idea of PAST wars so were in tune (so to speak) with those songs. Then in the late 60s and early 70s, the experience of the Vietnam War changed their feelings, hence all the protest songs against war, and hence the appearance of the hippies with their "Make Love Not War" slogans and rebellion against government, parents, working, and just about everything.

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #5

#6
Yes, marketing is everything, John! ;o)

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #4

#3
Thanks, Franci\ud83d\udc1dEugenia Hoffman, beBee Brand Ambassador and thanks for the share! ;o)

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #3

#3
Thanks, Franci! ;o)

Dominique 🐝 Petersen

6 years ago #2

#1
Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens were before your time then. ;o)

Jerry Fletcher

6 years ago #1

American pie I'd forgotten. Perhaps being child of the Woodstock generation is at fault.

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