Tuesday Tunes 268: Protesting Again

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A few months back I ran one of my mini-series, with three sets of protest songs. I brought it to a close even though I knew I had several more good ones for it, and have decided to round it off as a one-off piece today. Looking at the set list I really couldn’t leave any of these out – you’ll see what I mean as things unfold: these are classics of the genre.

I’m starting with one which goes straight to the heart of what is wrong with governments – any government, whatever their political stance:

You Haven’t Done Nothin’ was a track on Steve Wonder’s seventeenth album, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, which was released in July 1974 and reached #1 in the US and Canada, and #5 in the UK. It was released as a single a couple of weeks after the album, in early August, and also reached #1 in the US and Canada, but had to be content with #30 in the UK. It was aimed directly at President Nixon, who resigned two days after the record came out – though it is debatable if this had anything to do with his resignation, as there were a good many other factors in play! Like many before and since, he had been elected on promises of making a better life for his people and then failed to deliver. Oh, and there was Watergate, too! I’m minded of the meme that was common several years ago, of Washington saying “I cannot tell a lie,’ Nixon saying “I cannot tell the truth,” and Trump saying “I cannot tell the difference.” Still relevant, I think! This is a later live performance of what still feels a very powerful song – on the original recording backing vocals were provided by the Jackson 5.

I played one by this next guy for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, and this is of similar vintage:

Bob Dylan released Blowin’ In The Wind as the opening track to his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which came out in May 1963. He actually recorded this as early as July 1962, hence his tv appearance before the album release. His version wasn’t released as a single until August 1963, which was probably a mistake, as by then Peter Paul and Mary had achieved chart success with what to my ears is an inferior cover version. Bob’s is still for me the definitive version of his song, though: the sense of protest is greater than the watered down sound of PP&M. Nevertheless, he has a Gold Disc here in the UK for more than 400,000 sales of the single. The song poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom, and its chorus of “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” was described in a magazine article as being “impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind.” You make up your own mind!

My next choice for today is one that I regretted omitting first time round, and is one of the main reasons I’m playing this fourth set. This is simply masterful:

As you may have spotted, that official video of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On is a melange of the man himself and subsequent clips to make the song’s point for us. It was published just shy of six years ago and has over 13.5m views on YouTube: proof that it is still as meaningful now as ever. It was first released as a single in January 1971, and then became the title track of his eleventh album in May of that year. As a single it made #2 in the US, and despite only getting to #80 here in the UK it has achieved a Gold Disc for sales of more than 400,000 copies – a slow burner if ever there was one! It sold more than 2m in the US, too. The song is a response to one of its co-writers, Obie Benson (a Four Tops member) witnessing police brutality against protestors at an anti-war rally in Berkeley, California, in May 1969, which became known as ‘Bloody Thursday.’ He asked himself and fellow band members the question “What’s going on” and out of that the song was born. Marvin Gaye, himself, had been similarly inspired by social ills committed in the United States, citing the 1965 Watts Riot as a turning point in his life in which he asked himself, “With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?” The song is from the heart, and is still. sadly, incredibly relevant. The album, by the way, made #6 in the US and #56 in the UK, and has gone Gold in the US and Platinum in the UK.

That’s two from the Seventies and one from the Sixties so far, so how about one that was written in 1949? This is a Pete Seeger song, first recorded by the band he was then in, The Weavers, in 1950. As Wikipedia tells us, it had quite the beginning: “The song was first publicly performed by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays on June 3, 1949, at St. Nicholas Arena in New York City at a dinner in support of prominent members of the Communist Party of the United States, including New York City Councilman Benjamin J. Davis, who were then on trial in federal court, charged with violating the Smith Act by advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Four months later, it was one of three songs Seeger played as the warm-up act for Paul Robeson’s September 4 concert near Peekskill, New York, attended by Davis, which subsequently erupted into the notorious, anti-Communist Peekskill Riot.” It then became a hit single for Peter Paul and Mary (them again) in 1962, but the version I always liked best is the one I’m playing today:

Trini Lopez released his version of If I Had A Hammer on his debut album, a live recording titled Trini Lopez At PJ’s – a nightclub in West Hollywood – which came out in 1963 and reached #2 in the US. Released as a single, this one made #3 in the US and #4 in the UK. Wikipedia says that it got to #1 in 36 countries but doesn’t identify them! His vibrant performance might seem at odds with the song’s roots as a protest, but while you sing along and tap your feet you can’t help but think about what the lyrics are saying, and the positive message of hope for a better world that they convey.

So that’s 2-all for the Sixties and Seventies, until the Sixties come in with the winner to make it 3-2:

Sam Cooke released A Change Is Gonna Come in March 1964 on Ain’t That Good News, the final album he made before he was shot dead in an altercation at a motel in Los Angeles in December 1964. The album peaked at #34 in the US, and this track was released as a single that December, one of two to be issued in his memory. It was officially the B-side but has since become well known as a protest song, as you can see from the video. The A-side, Shake, made #7 in the US and this one reached #31 in its own right. The song became an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement, and is widely considered one of Sam’s greatest compositions, being listed at #3 in the 2021 edition of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Hits Of All Time, among other accolades. Sam said that he was inspired to write the song when he heard Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind (see above!) and felt ashamed that a white man had written a song that had so much meaning for a black man, and he hadn’t yet written anything like it. He began performing Bob Dylan’s song in his live shows, and it was included on a live album, Sam Cooke At The Copa, which was released in October 1964 and reached #29 in the US.

That neat link between my second and last of today’s songs brings the set to a close. All five are powerful songs of protest, all of which remain remarkably relevant fifty or sixty years on. It’s no coincidence that all of these are American songs: things haven’t changed, and when you have a President in effect declaring war on his own cities, it doesn’t feel like things will be getting any better there soon, does it? The poignancy of these songs, and many others like them, touches my heart.

That’s it for today. Next week’s tunes will be by way of celebration, so I hope to raise your spirits with them. Until then, I’ll see you again in a couple of days and then on Sunday. Take care and keep well 😊

52 thoughts on “Tuesday Tunes 268: Protesting Again”

  1. Pingback: September Fields | Take It Easy

  2. Sixty-one years later, and Trump et al are tearing down everything we bullt up in the 60s. We of every colour, gender, and nationality tried our best to effect change, and we came close. But all those closed minds were waiting like an iceberg under the surface, just waiting for an asshole like Trump to tell them it is ok to hate. Now look where we are…

    i wrote a protest song in the 70s, but had no idea what to do with it. I wish I had tried harder. It is somewhere on my blog, Body Bag Parade. I may have posted it here before. Let me know if I have not, and I will try to add the web address.

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    • Regarding the Stevie Wonder song: When this song I always took it as a personal admonition, in a good criticism way, that all the things we tried to do in the Sixties (the hippies, the flower children, rock and folk musicians, etc etc etc) were never able to do enough to really change the world for those who were not White, Christian, and male. We burned a lot of bras and draft cards, made a lot of noise, marched a lot of marches, took over a lot of universities, protested everything we could think to protest, almost all of it in vain then — AND EVEN MORESO NOW!

      Maybe Stevie was directing his words to Nixon, but that never occurred to myself or anyone I knew. It was us who failed, even though we tried so hard. And now Trump is putting the final bricks back in the walls we tried to tear apart.

      I still gave hope we lived our lives with purpose, but that feeling is getting weaker and weaker each day. We need to do more, and we need to fight even more. Anything less will prove our whole generation a failure.

      Sorry for the rant.

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      • I took that attribution from Wikipedia, and it seems they disagree with you! They quote several sources as to the song’s political meaning.

        I share that hope. It’s a horrible thing to think, but maybe some good will come out of Charlie Kirk’s demise.

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  5. I remember the song “If I Had a Hammer” but by a different artist. Trini Lopez is new to my ears…at least I think so. I like his voice. I will skip over to YT to see what else he did. This is a good collection of tunes. A few I didn’t know, though. 🙂

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  6. Well done, Clive. Good selection. I became an even bigger fan of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s going on?” when I watched a Motown documentary which revealed how he built that song to match the unrest he was feeling. My favorite rock-n-roll protest song is “Ohio” penned by Neil Young and played by CSN&Y. Keith

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    • Happy to have introduced you to the others, Stevie. That Sam Cooke one is beautiful, isn’t it, and sadly more relevant than ever: a kind of change did come, but it seems it was an illusion now being destroyed by Trump and his toadies.

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  8. WHOA Clive! You outdid yourself with this one! Five GREAT protest songs that sadly are just as relevant today as when they were first introduced. The last one actually left me with tears running down my cheeks … thinking how much we overcame, how far we came, and now it’s all being thrown away, sending us back 50, 100 years in time. Great post, my friend.

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    • Thank you, Jill, I’m pleased you liked these. I saved these up when I ran three previous posts of protest songs as I thought they’d make a good set: still relevant and powerful after so many years.

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  9. Three strong yes votes today (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke). A Change is Gonna Come is my favorite. I remember the other two well, but they’re just not my thing. The other two make me think of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and songs like Puff the Magic Dragon, which is another one I can live without.

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  10. This is a perfect set of powerful songs. Blowing in the Wind is my favorite. Every time I hear it I am moved by the words. Even when I was young and didn’t really know what it meant I liked the song. Now, the words are all the more poignant!
    I do have to admit though that in my opinion Peter, Paul and Mary do a much better job singing it! More pleasant to my ears. 🙂 We may disagree on that but I will agree with you that Bob wrote great lyrics.

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    • Thank you, Carolyn, I’m pleased you liked them. They haven’t aged, have they, and are still so relevant.

      We’ll have to agree to disagree on PP&M, as to my ears they just made every song sound the same – bland!

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      • Yes, still relevant! Though wouldn’t it be nice if the world was so peaceful that they wouldn’t be relevant?

        LOL!.I do remember now you saying that about Peter,Paul and Mary betore. We can agree to disagree. 🙂.As Puff the Magic Dragon just popped into my head. 😅

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      • I don’t think that will ever happen, sadly. War has been a fact of life somewhere in the world for thousands of years. And racism, at the root of so many troubles, has always been a problem.

        If you scroll through earlier comments on this post you’ll see that I’m not alone in my aversion to PP&M. The only one of theirs I really liked was Leaving On A Jet Plane, which I built a post around – #2 in my all time list, as it just kind of took off 🤣

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  15. You chose some terrific selections…there are more of course but these are great – I am still a huge fan of “Dialogue Pt. 1 & 2” by Chicago…certainly different than the band they became by the 80’s…as for Stevie Wonder, the only Artist to win Album Of The Year for three releases in a row, and this song was from one of them…

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    • Thanks, John. These are great, aren’t they, but I don’t know the Chicago one – never really a fan. After four sets of these I think they may have missed out!

      Stevie is simply incredible, isn’t he 😊

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      • If you can stream music try it – it’s a “Dialogue” between two people: one who wants to use protest to affect change, the other willing to get high and pretend everything is OK…part two is a jam that ends like “I Want You (He’s So Heavy)” did for The Beatles…

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  17. Five winners here today, Clive. I was a pre-teen and/or very young adult when these were released but I remember the circumstances very well. Technology is much sleeker, more sophisticated and omnipresent now but the threat of war was very real back then, as it is now. We had little faith in our leaders and it was a scary time for people with Vietnam a clear and present danger, Cuba and the Bay of Pigs in the spotlight, Khrushchev going ballistic at the UN, campus shootings and race riots breaking out ….. the list goes on. These are brilliant songs, each one. Thanks for sharing them today. Peace out. ✌🏼

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