Bill Anderson - Where Have All Our Heroes Gone video free download

Vietnam War songs: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/JBrummer/vietnam_war_song_project/

Anderson (born 1937) in Columbia, South Carolina, was a hugely successful pop-country singer and songwriter, based in Nashville, Tennessee. The song "Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?" (Decca Records # 32744) attacked the protest movement, by warning that the demonstrators were setting a bad example to the next generation. He felt "sick to my stomach" because the "now generation" admired left-wing radicals. He praised people from the past, such Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and Joe DiMaggio. Anderson particularly drew attention to Winston Churchill, whose "two fingers raised together meant victory, not just 'let your enemy have it all' kind of peace" - i.e. suggesting that those protesting against the Vietnam War were appeasers, and that Churchill's 'V for victory' meant more than the two-fingered 'peace sign' used by demonstrators.

"Where have all our heroes gone

What's come over our great land?

America is still my home sweet home

But where have all our heroes gone?

I saw a group of boys the other day

Standing in the corner of a playground

Looking and laughin' at a magazine

And I overheard one of the boys say:

'Man is he ever cool'...And I got sick to my stomach

Because I'd seen the cover...the man...had instigated a riot

In one of our major cities last summer

And the magazine was writing about

How the police were unkind to him

The judges where unfair and how he talked back

And slung his long hair about and cussed...

They made him into a regular hero...

Are these people these young boys look up to...

Are these heroes of the 'now' generation?...

I had heroes when I was a kid...like General Douglas MacArthur...

Like Jesse Owens who showed Hitler...

And General Ike, bless your soul...

We've killed some of our recent heroes, the Kennedys, the Kings...

My heroes were people like Joe DiMaggio

Who proved that nice guys can finish first...

And Winston Churchill, whose two fingers raised...meant victory

Not just let your enemy have it all kind of peace"

He also criticised an unnamed "communist" folk singer who did not pay taxes - presumably a reference to Joan Baez, who refused, from 1964, to pay 60% of her taxes, which went to the Department of Defense. Baez declared that "weapons and wars have murdered, burned, distorted, crippled", and thus she was a self-proclaimed 'war tax resister'.

"And a story of a folk singer who proudly claims

To be both a member of a party alien to our government and a non-tax payin' citizen

These young boys read with open eyes and open minds

And I thought to myself my God"

It also featured on the album "Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?" (Decca # DL 75254). On 3 October 1970 Billboard mentioned the track in its "singles spotlight", writing that "Anderson comes up with top...material and a powerhouse message lyric certain to take him to the top". It reached # 6 in the Billboard country charts on 5 December 1970, # 93 in the pop chart, and was composed by Anderson and Bob Talbert. The reference to African-American heroes - the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and the athlete Jesse Owens, led to some censorship on southern country radio stations.