MOG

(Attention: unless you reach this post through my page, the end of the post will not be accessible. I don't know why.)

Recently several Moggers (Sturgell 2/27/08 http://mog.com/Sturgell/blog_post/146943 and someone else I can’t remember) have had posts about a Mother Jones piece (http://motherjones.com/news/featurex/2008/03/torture-playlist.html) titled “The Torture Playlist,” about rock, hip-hop and other musical recordings used by the U.S. military on prisoners “to induce sleep deprivation, prolong capture shock, disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams.” I thought of three recordings to add to the list:

First is Chet Atkins playing “Blackjack,” an instrumental composed by John Loudermilk, who also wrote the song “Tobacco Road” among many others. This is from Atkins’ 1963 album The Guitar Genius.

I chose not to include the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” (1970).

Next is Nino Tempo & April Stevens singing “I’m Confessin' That I Love You” from 1964.

Last is Son House, the Mississippi Delta bluesman and songster, singing his original song, “American Defense,” recorded on a field trip by Alan Lomax in 1942.

This picture is a recently discovered and recently colorized ad original from 1930. It’s the only pre-1960s photo of him ever found.

After House was re-discovered in the 1960s and his 1941-42 recordings were reissued by Folkways, nobody ever adapted the lyrics of this to be an antiwar song. Sam Charters, who put together the Folkways album, wrote that this song “suggests that Son House, in other circumstances, might have emerged as a folk artist whose range extended into other areas besides the blues. The composition is a rough song in a 3/4 rhythm that responds to the emotionalism of the first months of the Second World War.” Here are the lyrics:

CHORUS: No use to shedding no tears, No use to having no fears, This war may last you for years.

American defense will run you some cents Just had to take care of your boys. You must raise more, produce far more cents than they use Just to save all your worries and toils. (CHORUS) Well, the red, white and blue that represent you You ought to do everything that you can. Buy war saving stamps; young men go to the camps; Be brave and take this stand. (CHORUS) Don’t let troubles sometimes all upset your mind; For you won’t know just what to do. Keep pushing, keep shoving, don’t be angry, keep loving, Be faithful, be honest and true. (CHORUS) You can say yes or no, but we got to win this war Because General McArthur’s not a friend. [?] There won’t be enough Japs to shoot a little game of craps Because the biggest of them all will be dead. (CHORUS) This war sure do bother our mother and father, Our sisters and brothers too. Dear friends and relations, the war’s end creation, Don’t let this worry you. (CHORUS)

Let me finish by repeating something I wrote months ago in a comment buried at the end of a post by ex-Mogger Carolyn O’Brien: These whiny Defeatocrats just don’t get it. Bush shows a lot of courage by risking the loss of Jewish voters’ support when he abandons namby-pamby Israeli prisoner interrogation methods, and forges ahead by adopting Soviet methods to extract the requisite false confessions.