Consumer Guide Album

A Soldier's Sad Story: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Black America 1966-1973 [Kent, 2001]
Stupidly, I never wrote about the two picks here that I knew to be classics back when Vietnam was the linchpin of left consciousness: Joe Tex's armed-and-loaded 1966 "I Believe I'm Gonna Make It" and Freda Payne's imploring 1971 "Bring the Boys Home." But I never forgot them, and as the war wore on was also a fan of Swamp Dogg's acerbic take on John Prine's "Sam Stone" and Bill Withers's excruciating live-at-Carnegie "I Can't Write Left-Handed." But the many keepers here I was ignorant of is impressive and embarrassing: for starters, the Monitors' conscripted "Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam)," Mel & Tim's lonely "Mail Call Time," Johnny and Jon's sentimental "Christmas in Vietnam," James Carr's resigned "Let's Face Facts," Emanuel Laskey's consoling "A Letter From Vietnam," Gloria Edwards's understanding "Something You Couldn't Write About," the O'Jays' understanding "There's Someone (Waiting Back Home)," and Edwin Starr's clarifying "Stop the War Now." James Maycock's notes calculate that 41 percent of post-1966 draftees were Black at a time when African-Americans made up 11 percent of the U.S. population. And note that although Starr's "War," which Motown presumably wouldn't license, was a 1970 #1, only two of these generally excellent records cracked top 40, both in 1971: Payne to number 12 and Starr to 26. So educate yourself, by no means painlessly but pleasurably as well. A