"Draft Dodger Rag" | |
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Song by Phil Ochs | |
from the album I Ain't Marching Anymore | |
Published | 1964 |
Released | 1965 |
Genre | Protest song, folk |
Length | 2:07 |
Label | Elektra |
Songwriter(s) | Phil Ochs |
Producer(s) | Jac Holzman |
"The Draft Dodger Rag" | ||||
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Single by Pete Seeger | ||||
from the album Dangerous Songs!? | ||||
B-side | "Guantanamera" | |||
Released | 1966 | |||
Genre | Country folk | |||
Length | 2:10 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Songwriter(s) | Phil Ochs | |||
Producer(s) | John Hammond | |||
Pete Seeger singles chronology | ||||
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"Draft Dodger Rag" is a satirical anti-war song by Phil Ochs, a U.S. protest singer from the 1960s known for being a harsh critic of the American military industrial complex. Originally released on his 1965 album, I Ain't Marching Anymore , "Draft Dodger Rag" quickly became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement. [1]
Ochs wrote "Draft Dodger Rag" as American involvement in the Vietnam War was beginning to grow. [2] The song is sung from the perspective of a gung-ho young man who has been drafted. When he reports for duty, however, the young man recites a list of reasons why he can't serve, including poor vision, flat feet, a ruptured spleen, allergies and asthma, back pain, addiction "to a thousand drugs", his college enrollment, his disabled aunt, and the fact that he carries a purse, [2] [3] very likely referring to homosexuality, given homosexuality was a way to dodge the draft. [4] (One historian of the draft resistance movement wrote that Ochs "described nearly every available escape from conscription". [3] ) As the song ends, the young man tells the sergeant that he'll be the first to volunteer for "a war without blood and gore". [2] [5]
"Draft Dodger Rag" was the first prominent satirical song about draft evasion in the Vietnam War. [6] One writer says its humor can be appreciated on its own level, without respect to the political message of the song. [7] Another says it added "much-needed humour" to the protest song genre. [8]
Ochs wrote of the song:
In Vietnam, a 19-year-old Vietcong soldier screams that Americans should leave his country as he is shot by a government firing squad. His American counterpart meanwhile is staying up nights thinking up ways to deceptively destroy his health, mind, or virility to escape two years in a relatively comfortable army. Free enterprise strikes again. [9]
Ochs performed "Draft Dodger Rag" in 1965 on a CBS Evening News television special Avoiding the Draft, one of the rare instances in which he appeared on a national American television broadcast. [10] [11]
On November 19, 1967, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour featured the Smothers Brothers and actor George Segal singing "Draft Dodger Rag". Dick Smothers introduced the song by saying it was about a "great effort" some young American men were making. Tom Smothers added that the song was about a problem and how it was being solved with "good old American ingenuity". They ended the song by proclaiming "Make love, not war!" [12]
Several performers beside the Smothers Brothers have covered "Draft Dodger Rag", including the Chad Mitchell Trio, The Four Preps, Kind of Like Spitting, Tom Paxton, David Rovics, and Pete Seeger. [13] Seeger's version was released as a single. [14]