Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942)[1] is an American singer/songwriter, musician, film composer and the lead singer and co-founder of the 1960s psychedelic folk-rock group Country Joe and the Fish.[2]
Since the group's breakup in 1971, McDonald has performed as a solo artist and, in the spirit of Woody Guthrie, continued to musically espouse his political views through his original songs.
His father was the son of a Presbyterian minister of Scottish descent. Born in Oklahoma and raised on a farm a 100 miles from Woody Guthrie's birthplace of Okemah, Worden worked for the phone company and, as a young man, traveled the country riding the rails, working odd jobs.[4] His mother, Florence Plotnick,[5] was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and served for many years as the City Auditor of Berkeley, California.[6][7][8] In their youth, both were Communist Party members and named their son after Joseph Stalin, though they later renounced the cause.[9][10]
In high school, McDonald was student conductor and president of the marching band.[3] At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent three years stationed in Japan. After his enlistment, he attended California State Los Angeles for a year, during which he started printing a small magazine called Et Tu.[11] In the early 1960s, he dropped out of college and moved to Berkeley with his first wife hoping to become a folk musician. He began busking on Telegraph Avenue and worked at Jon and Dierdra Lundberg's guitar shop, Lundberg Fretted Instruments.[2][12] He performed on Gert Chiarito's Midnight Special, an influential radio show on the local Berkeley station KPFA and formed the Berkeley String Quartet with Carl Shrager, Bob Cooper and Bill Steele.[13] He also formed the Instant Action Jug Band with future bandmate Barry Melton.[14][15][16][17] Both bands frequently played at the Jabberwock folk music club and coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue.
McDonald became involved with the Free Speech Movement and the wave of demonstrations against the Vietnam War at UC Berkeley. Soon he met Ed Denson, John Fahey's co-founder of Takoma Records. Together they launched Rag Baby, a magazine focused on the San Francisco folk music scene.[18] McDonald proposed doing "talking issues" of the magazine - audio supplements - which led him and Barry "The Fish" Melton to co-found Country Joe and the Fish. The band's first songs I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixing-To-Die-Rag, Superbird, Bassstrings, Thing Called Love and Section 43 were self-released through these "talking issues" of Rag Baby.[19] At the time, McDonald and Melton were living in the building behind the Jabberwock and sold Rag Baby at events on UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza and at Moe's Bookstore on Telegraph.[20] Denson began managing the band. Country Joe and the Fish played their first show under that name on November 5, 1965, joining The Fugs and Allen Ginsberg in a chemistry lab at UC Berkeley.[21][16][22]
His best known song, The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag (1965), is a black comedynovelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus --"One, two, three, what are we fighting for?"[39] became widely known amongst the Woodstock generation and Vietnam veterans of the '60s and '70s. McDonald wrote the song in about 20 minutes for an anti-Vietnam War play,[40] and told the New York Time that he "was inspired to write a song about how soldiers have no choice in the matter, but to follow orders, but with the irreverence of rock n' roll. It was essentially punk rock before punk existed."[41]
The original Fish Cheer consisted of the band leading the audience in a call-and-response with the audience, spelling the word "F-I-S-H," with McDonald yelling out, "What's that spell?" twice, the audience responding, and then a third call immediately followed by the song. The cheer evolved into the "Fuck Cheer" in the wake of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The F-I-S-H Cheer appeared on the original recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" on the LP of the same name. It quickly became popular, with audiences enthusiastically joining in during live performances.
During the summer of 1968, while the band was playing the Schaefer Music Festival tour, [42] drummer Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested to spell the word "fuck" instead of "fish". Although the audience embraced it, festival management did not and banned the band off the tour for life. The Ed Sullivan Show then canceled a scheduled appearance, telling them to keep the money they had already been paid in exchange for never playing on the show.[42] The modified cheer remained a staple at most of the band's live shows throughout the years, including Woodstock.
In Worcester, Massachusetts, McDonald was arrested for obscenity and fined $500 for uttering "fuck" in public.[43] Although the song was banned at radio, it went on to appear in such films and television, including Hambuger Hill, More American Graffiti and HBO's Generation Kill, in which Marines sing it while on patrol. [44][45]
McDonald's first two solo albums, Thinking of Woody Guthrie (1969) and Tonight, I'm Singing Just For You (1970), were recorded for Vanguard in Nashville, Tennessee with Sam Charters producing and Nashville A-Team players Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Grady Martin and Buddy Harmon.[46]Tonight, I'm Singing Just For You, which featured him, his wife and daughter on the cover, also featured the gospel group The Jordanairs.[47]
In 1971, McDonald joined the FTA Show an antiwar traveling vaudeville show, performing alongside Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Holly Near, Ben Vereen, and members of The Committee.[66][67] He released a three-song EP Resist! with Grootna, and raised funds for the show, which was written in part at his home.[68][69] He grew disenchanted by the show, which his then-wife Robin was a writer on,[70][71] and left before the filming of the FTA Show documentary, though his involvement with the show landed him on Richard Nixon's "enemies list."[72]
McDonald was actively involved in the Save The Whales movement of the mid-70s. Inspired by Farley Mowat's book A Whale For A Killing, he wrote Save The Whales![73] which he recorded for his album Paradise With An Ocean View (1976).[74][75] He performed the song at many Save The Whales concerts including a 1976 concert with Joni Mitchell and poet Gary Snyder,[76][77] and John Sebastian and Fred Neil's 1977 Rolling Coconut Revue in Japan with Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Odetta and others.[78][79] He began working with Greenpeace[80][81] and was invited to take part in an event in British Columbia involving the Rainbow Warrior ship, and participated in an benefit concert for the Cousteau Society, along with Crosby, Stills & Nash. After meeting Jacques Cousteau and learning about the annual baby seal kills, he wrote the song Blood on The Ice, which he later recorded on his album Goodbye Blues.[82] His music appears in the 2015 documentary How To Save The World about the origins of Greenpeace.[83]
Like many folk musicians of the era, McDonald was influenced by Pete Seeger both artistically and personally. He later performed at Seeger's festival marking the 20th anniversary of Clearwater, the sloot launched as part of efforts to restore the Hudson River.[3][7] In the early 1970s, Seeger recorded a cover of I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin-To-Die-Rag with the intention of releasing it as a single, but Columbia Records declined to distribute it.[9][10][3] Seeger left the label soon after, but continued to perform the song at live concerts.[5][8][14]
Throughout the 2000s, McDonald performed his Tribute to Woody Guthrie show, which featured Guthrie's songs alongside spoken-word pieces drawn from the writings of Guthrie, Malvina Reynolds, and McDonald's father—himself an Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugee.[84][85][86] In 2007, he released a live recording of the show, A Tribute To Woody Guthrie Performed by Country Joe McDonald.[87][54]Joel Selvin of The San Francisco Chronical described the performance as one which "McDonald channels this wry, compassionate man's wisdom without ever getting in the way, a refreshingly egoless performance by someone who remains as amazed by Guthrie as anyone."[88]
During the 80s and 90s, McDonald released several albums on his own Rag Baby Records, named after the magazine he started in 1965. These releases include Joady Guthrie's Spys on Wall Street (1985), which he produced, as well as his own Superstitious Blues (1991) and Carry On (1995).[89][90][91] Both albums feature Jerry Garcia on tracks Clara Barton, Starship Ride, Lady with the Lamp, and Blues for Michael, the latter a tribute to their mutual friend, blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield.[92][93][94][95][12] McDonald and Garcia performed Starship Ride and Lady with the Lamp live together at least once in 1989 in San Francisco.[96] Garcia also appears on Country Joe & The Fish Live! at the Filmore West 1969.[97][98]
Later releases included McDonald's 50 (2017),[99] and Natural Imperfections, (2005), a collaboration between McDonald and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause—best known as one half of the experimental duo Beaver and Krause. The instrumental project blends field recordings with atmospheric composition, aiming to immerse listeners “into the magical world of nature and music.”[100][101]
McDonald appears in the lyric of The Beach Boys song California Saga on Holland (1973). The lyric is a reference to the 1970 Big Sur Folk Festival, where The Beach Boys performed alongside McDonald, Joan Baez and Linda Rondstadt. The lyric evokes the atmosphere and communal spirit of the festival: "Have you ever been to a festival/a Big Sur congregation? Where Country Joe will do his show/And sing about liberty/And the people there in the open air/are one big family".[102][103][104][105]
In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic "Muskrat Ramble", co-written by Kid Ory. The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court, however, upheld McDonald's laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of the song, with the same questionable section, for some three decades without bringing a suit. In 2006, Ory was ordered to pay McDonald $395,000 for attorney fees and had to sell her copyrights to do so.[citation needed]
McDonald has reconvened on occasion with his bandmates from Country Joe and the Fish, notably for their 1977 album Reunion.[106] In 2004, McDonald regrouped again with three of the original members (Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh) and they toured the United States and the United Kingdom as the "Country Joe Band".
In 2005, McDonald joined a larger protest against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts at the California State Capitol Building.[107] Later in 2005, political commentator Bill O'Reilly compared McDonald to Cuban President Fidel Castro, remarking on McDonald's involvement in Cindy Sheehan's protests against the Iraq War.[108][109] McDonald originally met Sheehan in 2004 and he wrote the song "Support the Troops after hearing her speak about her son Casey Sheehan."[110][111]
As both a solo artist and a member of Country Joe & The Fish, McDonald has written and recorded numerous songs about veterans and war. His albums War, War, War and The Vietnam Experience focus entirely on themes of conflict and its aftermath, featuring tracks such as “Agent Orange.”[126] He also performed at the 1986 “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans” benefit concert at the LA Forum with Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Voight, Brian Wilson and Neil Young.[127][128][129]
McDonald has recounted a story he attributed to Phil Butler, a former Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war and co-founder of Veterans for Peace, stating that the Viet Cong occasionally played American music to demoralize captives, but that hearing I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin-to-Die-Rag instead boosted their morale. He has also related an account from a Vietnam veteran who said that a friend died in his arms during the war, and that the friend's final words were, “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die.”[130]
Photo from Country Joe's 1968 marriage to Robin Menken
McDonald was married to Kathe Werum from 1963 to 1966.
McDonald has noted that his girlfriend at the time, Janis Joplin, showed much anger for breaking up with her to be with Robin Menken but asked him to write a song about her; the result was "Janis".[39][141]
On 31 March 1968, McDonald married Robin Menken, a year after his divorce from Werum.[142]
Seven's name was the inspiration behind the character Six on Blossom, cited by Don Reo on PeopleTV special Blossom Cast Reunion aired 2017, timestamp 10:07-10:33. Don's son went to school with Seven, Don asked his son if she would be cool with his naming a character Seven, Seven said no, so it was either Six or Eight.[146]
McDonald has four other children, Devin (b. 1976) and Tara (b. 1980) from his marriage to Janice Taylor, and Emily (b. 1988) and Ryan (b. 1991) from his marriage to Kathy Wright.[142]
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