Whole World in an Uproar by Aaron Leonard

Author:Aaron Leonard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781914420931
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joe and I had a kind of instant communication. Both of us were “red diaper babies” and had astoundingly similar backgrounds. His dad was from Oklahoma, mine from Texas, and both of our mothers were East Coast Jews. We shared a mutual fondness for Woody Guthrie — Woody and his family had actually been neighbors of mine in early childhood, and my dad was a friend of Woody’s and all things Left in folk music.32

Country Joe & the Fish, 1967

Credit: Vanguard Records Publicity Photo

The two would tour as a duo performing at universities in the northwest for Students for a Democratic Society.33 Their biggest song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag” — a satire of the absurdity of fighting the Vietnam War — was first released in 1965, but was re-released on the album I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die in late 1967. It would become iconic.

While much of the group’s music was experimental, with an eye toward psychedelic drugs — Electric Music for the Mind and Body was their first release — their third album, Together, released in 1968, was pointedly dedicated “To Bobby Hutton — Black Revolutionary 1950–1968.” Hutton was an eighteen-year-old Black Panther member killed in a shoot-out with Oakland police two days after the King assassination.34

As a result of their radical inclinations, the group found themselves the object of physical assault. When they performed in Chicago, in the days before the Democratic National Convention, members of the group were singled out for attack. The Washington Post, which mis-characterized the incident under the headline “Three Yippies Beaten at Hotel” — they were a music group, not Yippies — did correctly report that McDonald, Melton, and bandmate David Cohen were attacked by three men at the Lake Shore Drive hotel for “no apparent reason.”35 Joe McDonald doesn’t remember much about the incident, but describes how:

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