| I Ain't Marching Any More | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1965 | |||
| Recorded | 1964 | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Length | 50:54 | |||
| Label | Elektra | |||
| Producer | Jac Holzman and Paul A. Rothchild | |||
| Phil Ochs chronology | ||||
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I Ain't Marching Any More is Phil Ochs' second LP, released on Elektra Records in 1965.
Ochs performs alone on twelve original songs, an interpretation of Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" set to music (much as Poe's "The Bells" had been set to music on the previous album) and a cover of Ewan MacColl's "The Ballad of the Carpenter".
Of the twelve originals, probably the most noted was the title track, with its distinctive trilling guitar part, that spoke of a soldier sick of fighting. Also of note was the album closer, "Here's to the State of Mississippi", a biting criticism of that state's lack of civil rights and generally bigoted attitude. Other important songs include "Draft Dodger Rag" (assailing those "red blooded Americans" who were in favor of US participation in the Vietnam War but did not fight because they were just summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots), "That Was The President" (a tribute to John F. Kennedy written soon after his assassination), "Talking Birmingham Jam" (which used the traditional talking blues form to assail the racist leaders of Birmingham) and "Links on the Chain" (attacking labor unions for excluding African-Americans and failing to support civil rights).
Ochs showed great thematic versatility on the album, including not just blatantly anti-war or protest songs but also poetry (Alfred Noyes, John Rooney, and Ewan MacColl) and songs less in lock-step with the contemporary American radical left. He noted, for instance, in the liner notes that his Marxist friends couldn't understand why he wrote "That Was the President," dryly adding that that was one of the reasons he wasn't a Marxist. However, Ochs backed away from the song's hero worship of John F. Kennedy by explaining that "after the assassination, Fidel Castro aptly pointed out that only fools could rejoice at such a tragedy, for systems, not men, are the enemy." [1] Ochs showed more socialist sympathies with the songs "The Men Behind the Guns" and "Ballad of the Carpenter," with its memorable lyric "Jesus was a working man." (Ochs wrote in the liner notes that "songs like this" were one of the reasons the State Department blocked Ewan MacColl from entering the U.S., adding that this was unwise given "the quality of culture in America.")
Among more traditional protest songs, the most pointed might be "Iron Lady," about the death penalty, with the memorable line "And a rich man never died upon the chair." (The "iron lady" in the title referred to the electric chair.) Ochs wrote that "in the future, intelligent men will read in amazement about the murder of Caryl Chessman." But hard-hitting songs like that and the title song were softened with sentimental and even romantic songs like "That Was the President" and Noyes' "The Highway Man." And while critical, songs like "Draft Dodger Rag" and "Talking Birmingham Jam" used humor rather than harsh rhetoric to make their points. Commenting on "Draft Dodger Rag," Ochs compared the Viet Cong soldier who screamed his hatred of Americans while being shot by a firing squad, to his American counterpart who stayed "up nights thinking of ways to" escape the army. [1]
On the 2001 CD reissue, an alternative electric version of "I Ain't Marching Any More" follows "Here's to the State of Mississippi". Released as the A-side of a British 45, it had previously appeared in the United States on the 1976 compilation Chords of Fame and the 1997 box set Farewells & Fantasies , both out-of-print.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [2] |
| PItchfork | 8.5/10 [3] |
All songs by Phil Ochs unless otherwise noted.
Philip David Ochs was an American songwriter and protest singer. Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, political activism, often alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs from the 1960s to early 1970s and released eight albums.
James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was an English folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.
A highwayman was a criminal who robbed travelers on the road.
All the News That's Fit to Sing was Phil Ochs's first official album. Recorded in 1964 for Elektra Records, it was full of many elements that would come back throughout his career. It was the album that defined his "singing journalist" phase, strewn with songs whose roots were allegedly pulled from Newsweek magazine. It is one in a long line of folk albums used to tell stories about everyday struggles and hardships.
Chords Of Fame is a two-LP compilation from American folk singer Phil Ochs, compiled by his brother Michael Ochs shortly after Phil's death and released in 1976 on A&M Records. With the exception of 1969's Rehearsals for Retirement, all studio albums are represented, as well as a number of live releases.
Live at Newport is a 1996 compilation on Vanguard Records of folk singer Phil Ochs' three appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, in 1963, 1964 and 1966. Presenting twelve tracks that also appear on his first, second, third, fourth and fifth albums, Ochs is at his peak as a folk singer throughout, singing anti-war songs alongside those espousing civil rights and worker's rights, and showcasing some more introspective numbers that would be dramatically rearranged on the fourth and fifth albums.
The Early Years is a compilation of seven recordings Phil Ochs made for a Vanguard compilation in 1964 and twelve made at three Newport Folk Festivals in 1963, 1964, and 1966, the latter tracks previously released on the 1996 compilation Live at Newport.
There but for Fortune was a 1989 compilation that summed up the three albums that Phil Ochs recorded for Elektra Records between 1964 and 1966. The album drew heavily from the third, presenting ten of its eleven tracks, and presenting six and five respectively from the first and second.
There and Now: Live in Vancouver 1968 [sic] was a 1990 archival release of a concert by Phil Ochs in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the PNE Garden Auditorium on Thursday, March 13, 1969. Performing solo with guitar, Ochs was worn, weary and despairing in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Ochs presents some of his older material, such as "There But For Fortune," "Changes" and "The Highwayman," alongside then-new songs from the as-yet-unreleased Rehearsals for Retirement such as "The Doll House" and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed." The album thus documents two eras of Ochs in one seventy-minute show.
American Troubadour is a 1997 British 2-CD set that presented a portrait of singer-songwriter Phil Ochs' later career, featuring selections from each of the five albums he recorded for A&M Records, from various non-album single sides and from a performance Ochs gave on March 13, 1969, in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is notable for the inclusion of Ochs' post-1970 single sides, otherwise unavailable on compact disc and for the inclusion of a cover of Chuck Berry's "School Days", a previously unavailable outtake from Ochs' infamous March 27, 1970, concert at Carnegie Hall.
Farewells & Fantasies is the 1997 posthumous box set of the work of singer/songwriter Phil Ochs, chronicling his life and career in music from 1964 through 1970. With its non-chronological running order, it plays like three separate albums, each showcasing a different side of Ochs. The compilation was produced by Gary Stewart, Michael Ochs and Meegan Lee Ochs. Liner notes include a foreword by Meegan Lee Ochs, "The Sound of Freedom Callin'" by Michael Ventura and "Song of a Soldier: The Life and Times of Phil Ochs" by Mark Kemp, track-by-track explanations by Ben Edmonds, discography, selected bibliography, and many photographs, some of which are from the family's private collections. The box set is dedicated to a friend, co-writer, and inspiration to Phil Ochs, Bob Gibson, who died while the box set was in production. Its title comes from the back of Ochs' LP Tape from California.
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folk singer and songwriter. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years and was married to the singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989.
Joan Baez/5 is the fifth solo album and third studio album by American folk singer Joan Baez, released in October 1964. It peaked at number 12 on the Billboard 200 chart. The single "There But for Fortune" reached number 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and became a top-ten single in the UK.
Isla Cameron was a Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. AllMusic noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival – and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". She was a respected and popular folk music performer through the 1950s and early 60s as well as appearing in several films; she focused almost exclusively on her acting career from 1966 onwards. Cameron provided the singing voice for actress Julie Christie's part in the hit 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but changed career direction and became a film researcher in the early 1970s before her early death in a domestic accident in 1980. One of the traditional songs in her repertoire, "Blackwaterside", recorded by Cameron in 1962, was subsequently popularised by notable "next generation" U.K. folk music performers Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny.
"The Highwayman" is a romantic ballad and narrative poem written by Alfred Noyes, first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The following year it was included in Noyes' collection, Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, becoming an immediate success. In 1995 it was voted 15th in the BBC's poll for "The Nation's Favourite Poems".
Learn: The Songs of Phil Ochs is a cover album by the band Kind of Like Spitting. The songs included were all written by the U.S. protest singer Phil Ochs. The CD booklet features Ben Barnett's studious commentary on the songs. It was released on September 6, 2005, on Hush Records.
What's That I Hear?: The Songs of Phil Ochs is a 1998 tribute compilation to the music of the late Phil Ochs. The various performers cover several generations of Ochs' admirers. All profits from the album's sales were divided equally between the non-profits, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and Sing Out! Magazine.
"I Ain't Marching Any More" is an anti-war song by Phil Ochs, a U.S. protest singer from the 1960s known for being a passionate critic of the American military industrial complex. Originally released on his 1965 album of the same name, "I Ain't Marching Any More" is one of Ochs's best-known songs.
"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.
