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The Sixties Spectator
Dolan, Not Dylan
A new compilation of right-wing folk—featuring songs like “Join the SDS” and “Fascist Threat”—shows a new side of the 1960s.
In his excellent, edifying study Political Folk Music in America From Its Origins to Bob Dylan, Lawrence J. Epstein tells the fascinating tale of the left-wing “free-spirited modern troubadours” who “envisioned themselves as moral auditors for the angels.”
Of course, as even the briefest survey of Scientology or the Department of Homeland Security demonstrates, self-proclaimed “moral auditors” are rarely all that keen on submitting to audits themselves, which is probably why when the Associated Press wrote up Cry, the Beloved Country in April 1969, the opening paragraph focused squarely on the dissonance of the artist’s dissent:
Tony Dolan composes and sings folk songs. He also requires that the girls he dates subscribe to the conservative magazine National Review.
And this, it seems, is precisely how Dolan—a future conservative commentator and Reagan speechwriter credited with coining the phrase “evil empire”—preferred it.
“I’m composing and performing to show that conservatism swings,” he explained, and, indeed, even setting aside the liner notes penned by William F. Buckley Jr. (!) and such hippie-antagonizing ditties as “Join the SDS”:
Join the SDS
Oh, we’ll canonize Alger Hiss
Join the SDS and learn to love the communists
—and “New York Times Blues”:
All the news that’s fit to print, unless of course it’s anti-communist…
Hey, the ADA blew up the Statue of Liberty
Let’s see, that was on page 106, Column B, I think
—the fiery “Remember Bloody Budapest” made clear Dolan would show no quarter to those who were aesthetic contemporaries but ideological adversaries:
Pete Seeger, you have sung so long about justice and love for us all, but where were your songs of righteousness when Kennedy was killed by a Marxist or when they built the Berlin Wall?
Well, Joan Baez, you sing so soft, you sing about the falling rain, but where were your songs of righteousness…when Poland’s youth lay slain?
The Omni Recording Corporation has lifted these and other provocations out from the dustbin of history for Freedom Is a Hammer: Conservative Folk Revolutionaries of the Sixties, a fun, exquisitely packaged 29-track compilation of cultural oddities featuring Dolan’s work alongside salvos from Baez-esque operatic chanteuse Vera Vanderlaan and plucky pop-folk songstress Janet Greene, who left a cushy gig playing Cinderella on a Columbus, Ohio, television show to record “Commie Lies” and “Fascist Threat”:
I think I’ll take a little quiz and find out just what fascism is,
though some may think that it’s extreme to find out what words really mean:It has a party rather small that seeks to rule and govern all
A single leader whom they say everybody must obey
Destroy the government with lies, seize control and centralize
Very shortly you will see a fascist state monopolyAlthough we’ve used the fascist name
Communism is just the same
It’s plain to see these two are twins
And freedom dies if either wins
About the Author
Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (13) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 2.21.13 @ 7:22AM
I have never heard of any of the people you cite. Oh, and by the way, please stop massing all the "Baby Boomers" into the Hippie Scum; some of us were the first members of our family on either side to attend university and graduate, and we spent the Sixties fighting to get an education while the Hippie Scum were trying to destroy the universities and prevent us from attending classes. Lots of us had GI fathers who had fought against exactly what the Hippie Scum were advocating, and who taught us the arguments we used against them when we had the chance. Yes, I know it's more fun to lump us all into the Proletariat, but some of us who remain stubbornly conservative, and attend the Latin Mass too by the way, were on your side even back then.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.21.13 @ 7:58AM
“…while the Hippie Scum were trying to destroy the universities and prevent us from attending classes…”
While some of the Hippie Scum were trying to destroy the universities and prevent classes from taking place, others were merely trying to take the place over, and were generally quite successful. Using the mantra of Freedom of Speech, they gained their foothold, and once they had control, it was among the first things they jettisoned as they transformed academia from laboratories of thoughts and ideas to indoctrination centers for the Left.
Seek| 2.21.13 @ 1:16PM
Most hippies were apolitical. They were dropouts, not drop-ins.
JimH| 2.21.13 @ 8:39AM
The best commentary on the leftist folk music of the 60’s was by Tom Lehrer.’ We are the folk song army. Every one of us cares. Were all concerned about war and injustice unlike the rest of you squares’.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.21.13 @ 9:27AM
"If you feel dissatisfaction
strum your frustration away
some people might prefer action
but
give me a folk song any old day"
Jim Adcox| 2.21.13 @ 11:39AM
BURMA SHAVE!
Bill8472| 2.21.13 @ 1:35PM
Tom Lehrer:
"All the world is in tune
On a Spring afternoon
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
* * * *
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment,
Except for the few we take home to experiment..."
A Grin without a Cat| 2.21.13 @ 12:09PM
(while popping gum) It's got a good beat, but ya can't dance to it. I give it a thirty-five.
Bill8472| 2.21.13 @ 12:34PM
When it comes to Dolan's song asking Joan Baez where she was when this outrage or that one took place, I would like to say that although I'm not a great fan of Joan Baez either for her politics or her approach to most folk songs, but she deserves credit for being the ONLY high profile folkie who spoke out against the Khmer Rouge slaughter of the Cambodian people.
She did that at a time when such lefties as William Kunstler refused to see what they could plainly see as a left-wing-engineered disaster and even defended the Khmer Rouge, saying they wouldn't criticize a "socialist" regime.
Seek| 2.21.13 @ 1:21PM
Not every "folk song" has to be political. One of the reasons why Dylan was so successful artistically and commercially is that he revealed his own personal life in non-political ways. His lyrics were stream-of-consciousness perceptions of larger truths.
The conflation of culture and politics as nothing more than partisan warfare is a symptom of a deep problem in our ranks. Conservatism needs to be de-Breitbartized.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.21.13 @ 1:41PM
To reinforce JimH's point about, Tom Lehrer also opined to that effect in his work:
"There are innocuous folk songs
but we regard 'em with scorn
the folks who sing 'em got no social conscience
that don't even care if Jimmy Crack Corn"
Ronsch| 2.21.13 @ 2:42PM
My favourite folk song of the 1960s (granted I was only 1 year old when it came out), but, heh...
The Ballad Of The Green Berets
SSGT Barry Sadler and Robin Moore
Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret
Silver wings upon their chest
These are men, America's best
One hundred men will test today
But only three win the Green Beret
Trained to live off nature's land
Trained in combat, hand-to-hand
Men who fight by night and day
Courage peak from the Green Berets
Silver wings upon their chest
These are men, America's best
One hundred men will test today
But only three win the Green Beret
Back at home a young wife waits
Her Green Beret has met his fate
He has died for those oppressed
Leaving her his last request
Put silver wings on my son's chest
Make him one of America's best
He'll be a man they'll test one day
Have him win the Green Beret.
Bill8472| 2.21.13 @ 6:48PM
I've always thought this one and Ballad of the Green Berets would make a good A side and B side of a record dedicated to the heart of the side-by-side cultures of the 1960s:
Phil Ochs, Draft Dodger Rag:
I'm just a typical American boy
From a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And an keepin' old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve
I knew better dead than red
But when I got to my old draft board
Buddy, this is what I said
Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen
And I always carry a purse
I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat
My asthma's getting worse
Consider my career, my sweetheart dear
My poor old invalid aunt
Besides, I ain't no fool, and I'm goin' to school
And I'm workin' in a defense plant.
I've got a dislocated disc and a racked up back
I'm allergic to flowers and bugs
And when the bombshell hits, I get epileptic fits
And I'm addicted to a thousand drugs
I got the weakness woes, I can't touch my toes
I can hardly reach my knees
And if the enemy ever came close to me
Well, I'd probably start to sneeze
(Chorus)
I hate Chou En Lai, and I hope he dies
But I think you gotta see
That if someone's gotta go over there
That someone isn't me
So, have a ball, Sarge, watch 'em fall
Yeah, kill me a thousand or so
And if you ever get a war without any gore
Well, I'll be the first to go
(Chorus)