Dollar Country Newsletter, January 2025
Chad Morgan, The Vietnam War Song Project Pt. II, Doctor Woman Of The Cumberlands
Number 009, January 2025
News From Dollar Country
It feels like it was November just yesterday but when I look at my calendar it says January. This is my fourth complete rewrite of the news section, which has never happened. I’m the sort to have ideas formed in my head and when I sit down I write it out and at best give it a once or twice over. The newsletter is full of what most people would consider rough drafts as far as writing is concerned, but that’s just the way my brain has always worked. So obviously there’s something about this newsletter that has just fought against being summarized in my head. Well I think I figured it out.
I barely remember 2024. It’s the year end newsletter so I was trying to sum the year up, do a year end list, think about my favorite songs I played, but I don’t remember. Our son was born in December of 2023 so I started 2024 running on fumes and it stayed that way most of the year. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about the year or when anything happened, I was experiencing sleep depravation. It’s hard writing about fatherhood because everything has already been said, and the stuff that you really need to know you can’t write about because it’s an all encompassing lesson. Trying to learn what being a parent is like is like learning a language from a book compared to living among native speakers.
Sometimes people say that everyone has a kid, even the people who don’t. What they mean is that even people who don’t have actual human children have some sort of thing that takes up their time. For some people it’s pets, for some people it’s a project. In many ways I felt that way about Dollar Country. I spent all day thinking about it and any free time I had was spent working on it. However there’s one big difference between the two things. An obsessive project lives in your schedule, a baby does not. As much as I spent thinking and working on DC it never woke me up screaming in the middle of the night, if I only got two hours of sleep I could set it aside and get some more. A baby doesn’t work that way. A baby forces you to work in it’s schedule, it will not be tamed. A baby will call for you when you’re on your last nerve and your battery is completely depleted, and you do what it needs.
So I guess what what I’m saying is that there’s no year end list, maybe I’ll get ‘em next time and maybe I won’t. Among the many, many lessons I learned in my first year of fatherhood is that I can’t make myself feel guilty about everything I don’t get done because if I did I’d be too busy feeling guilty to do anything. In 2025 I’m planning on spending as much time doing DC as I can and try to get some extra sleep!
Cheers
Franklin
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►Chad Morgan
Chadwick William Morgan
b. Feb 11 1933
d. Jan 1 2025
For my readers outside of Australia there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Chad Morgan, but in Australia, well, he wasn’t exactly a household name either. Morgan was from a small town in southeastern Queensland called Wondai and started playing guitar and writing songs in the late 40s. In 1952 he applied for Australian’s Amateur Hour, a radio show, and made it to the grand finals in December but didn’t take home the grand prize of $1000, but he did record two songs while in Sydney for it, which were released in early December 1952.
This first 78 on Regal Zonophone was The Sheik Of Scrubby Creek bw You Can Have Your Women, I’ll Stick To My Booze. From then on he was known as The Sheik Of Scrubby Creek. He didn’t stop playing for the next 70 years, playing his last show in 2024 at the age of 91. Much of his music is humor based, a bit like Lonzo & Oscar in the states, but to say it’s just parody or country humor takes away from the great songwriting and performing Morgan did. In many of his songs he uses his voice to make sound effects or animal noises. His buck teeth and hillbilly outfit played into this persona.
Through his 70 year career he toured all over Australia including with the Slim Dusty show. I’ve looked for more live videos but all I can seem to find are from his later life, which are good shows but I’d love to how to performed as a young man. You can find his music on a number of affordable compilations or on streaming services. I personally like his earlier stuff compiled on The Sheik Of Scrubby Creek from 1958 which features all of his early singles.
Maybe he’s not a household name, but he went out and wrote, recorded, and performed for 70 years and not a lot of people can say that. Who knows how many smiles he put on faces or how many people he entertained, he did good.
PS: After writing this out I was doing some more browsing and found out that in 2008 a radio station claimed that Chad Morgan had passed away. His response was to call his sister, who had seen the report, as the “Ghost of Chad Morgan.” He has a documentary called I’m Not Dead Yet you can find somewhere.
►Interview with Justin Brummer, founder of the Vietnam War Song Project
This is a companion interview to an article written by Justin Brummer in Newsletter #8 about the VWSP. If you would like to know more about the basis and founding of the VWSP you can check there.
Browse the collection by searching for Vietnam War Song Project at rateyourmusic.com
Project Updates posted to:
bluesky (@vietnamwarsongs.bsky.social)
instagram (@vietnamwarsongs)
Listen to the songs:
youtube.com/user/VietnamSongProject
Dollar Country: What is the Vietnam War Song Project and how did it start?
Vietnam War Song Project: The project grew out of my PhD, which looked at Anglo-American relations during the Nixon period, which covered Vietnam and other key political events of the late 60s and early 70s.
Although I started as a political / diplomatic historian, I was always interested in the cultural output that politics generated, including film, music, comics, literature, art, etc. While conducting research at archives in D.C. and Maryland in 2007, I discovered that there was little written about the songs of Vietnam, both in books, journals, and online. So, I started making a list and searching for records at stores and online. I was surprised and intrigued by the volume of songs I came across so quickly, and soon realized that this deserved further research and a dedicated archive.
Over the last 15+ years this developed into a full archival project, cataloguing and collecting 6000+ Vietnam War songs identified to date – scanning, digitising, collecting data, annotating, and writing articles on themes related to the war and songs.
Alongside this, I collected material for the Post-War Political Songs Project – which looks at songs by key politicians, such as JFK, MLK, JFK, RFK, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Wallace, and key events and issues, such as Civil Rights, the 1970s energy crisis, economic crises, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the First Gulf War, and more.
What are the criteria for a song being included in the collection? Does a song have to specifically mention the war or can they be just peripherally related?
For song released during the war years, I’ve taken a broader view, including songs which might not specifically reference Vietnam, but are important cultural perspectives in setting the scene – this could include references to patriotism or protest and other war-related themes, such as combat, the draft, demonstrations, soldiers and veterans.
In the post-war period, I’ve taken a tighter approach, with songs needing to mention Vietnam, or related issues, such as PTSD, prisoners of war, the plight and treatment of veterans, and Vietnam memorials.
What got you interested in collecting this and why do you feel this music is important?
For reasons that are well-documented, the 60s was a key period of change in culture and society, with traditional barriers broken-down, and an explosion of youth music, which was in part fuelled by the social conflict the Vietnam War provoked as the key conflict in post-war US history which still influences both political and cultural discussion of contemporary issues.
However, the focus on this period of history is typically on politicians and diplomatic decision-making, not on cultural representations, and when music about the war is studied, the emphasis is largely on contemporary popular protest songs. However, there are thousands of Vietnam War songs which have been neglected in historical study, covering a wide range of genres and political attitudes and spanning from the contemporary period to the present day. Thus, it’s important to investigate this and collect and preserve these records as key historical artefacts.
Have you gotten the chance to talk to any artists included in the project?
Yes, I’ve interviewed several artists, who are another important historical source – especially veterans that produced songs, which I plan to turn into an oral history segment of the project along with recordings of the songs in question.
Do you have any limits regarding genre, formats or years?
With regards to the time-period, anything pre-1960 needs to specifically mention aspects of the Vietnam War (so no general mentions of soldiers, war, and protest). There are only a small number from the 1950s that I’ve come across so far, mainly North Vietnamese songs, whose struggle for independence pre-dates US direct involvement under Kennedy in the early 60s, and thus have a different interpretation of the timeline. Nearly all US and international references are from the 60s onwards.
Otherwise, there are no limits – songs continue to be released, about and referencing the war. The project includes all genres, formats, and countries – for example, I recently purchased a bunch of Chinese and Japanese rare records from the 60s & 70s, containing Vietnam War songs.
When you’re out digging for records how often do you find songs you didn’t know about? I assume that you know about a lot of the songs you don’t yet own physical copies of, correct?
Yes, there are many songs I’m aware of, and still looking for copies, so I’m always excited to find those. But with regards to totally new songs identified, after 15+ years, that number has gone down, but still occurs around 5-20 times a year (it’s a little inconsistent). Just this week (Oct 2024) I was digging at a local Austin record shop in the $1 section, and pulled a single titled “The Flag”, which I assumed was a generic patriotic record, but turned out to be specifically about Vietnam, and completely new to the discography, and it’s great when I put on the radio and hear a brand new song that mentions Vietnam.
Do you ever have dreams about finding records?
Haha, yes, which I guess means I’m officially obsessed.
What are some interesting trends you’ve noticed in different genres? Do some genres lean more heavily into certain types of stories about Vietnam?
The two well-known areas are country music leaning heavily toward ‘patriotic’ / anti-protest / pro-government themes, while contemporary folk and rock mainly featured protest and peace songs.
More interesting trends are seen in soul / gospel / funk. In the early years, there are a surprising number of patriotic songs, about fighting for Uncle Sam and doing one’s duty. From around 1967-68, there’s a change in tone, from criticising the brutal impact of the war on families and soldiers, to outright protesting against the war. Furthermore, an increasing number bring up Civil Rights, which questioned the purpose of fighting to preserve a non-communist South Vietnam, when African Americans did not have equal rights in the US.
This coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. public opposition to the war declared in 1967, in his famous speech “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam”, which drew a link between Civil Rights and the war, which may have influenced a change in perspective from the African American community, and thus reflected in songs. Also, a disproportionate number of Africa Americans were drafted and died, and so this negative impact had started to filter through in the late 60s.
Recently, I’ve been doing research on post-war genres, and found some interesting themes. In hip hop / rap, I’ve identified 100+ songs referencing the war, largely using Vietnam as a metaphor for violence in US cities and communities, as well as portraying discrimination against African Americans by police and politicians. While in punk, metal, and hip hop, songs use Vietnam as a comparison to contemporary conflicts, from Reagan interventions in the 80s, to the First Gulf War (1990), and Iraq War (2003). Many of these songs also reference scenes from Vietnam War films, showing the huge cultural impact of film in collective memory of the war. Moreover, these musicians, largely born in the 70s and 80s, mention a father or relative who was a Vietnam veteran in their songs – emphasising intergenerational trauma caused by the war.
What are three songs you’d recommend for someone new to what you do?
“Vietnam Blues” by Kris Kristofferson, written in 1965 when he had just recently left the army. The song is performed by Jack Sanders. It is a great example of a country anti-protest song, in which a soldier on leave in Washington D.C. came across a “strange looking bunch” of protesters, gathering signatures to send a “telegram of sympathy...to Ho Chi Minh”. This of course annoys the soldier, who says he’s not a warmonger but must fight for freedom. Interestingly, years later in 1996, Kristofferson spoke in a documentary (titled “Kris Kristofferson - His life and work”) on how his views on the war had completely changed, that he had come to believe that the war was a “tremendous mistake” and “inhuman”.
“Monday in May (The Kent State Tragedy)” by garage rock group Third Condition – a good example of an obscure record released in reaction to a significant Vietnam War-related event, in this case the Kent State shooting. My promo copy is date stamped 10 June 1970, so probably the first song about this event, released around the same time as the most famous song, “Ohio” by CSN&Y. The song called the event a “shame for the nation” and that “the screams of the dying are burned in their mind”. The event generated 80+ songs, so this choice shows how the VWSP is collecting thousands of rare and obscure songs and perspectives.
“Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen, one of the most commercially successful Vietnam songs in the post-war period, and an example of the 80s trend of reflecting on Vietnam, containing critical, bitter lyrics about American’s role in Vietnam and the treatment of veterans. It’s also interesting because it has been reinterpreted by certain groups to portray a patriotic, nationalistic, and flag-waving perspective. Also check out the B-side of the single, “Shut Out the Light”, a less well-known Springsteen Vietnam track. Springsteen has been prolific on the Vietnam front, with 10+ songs addressing aspects of the war. Probably half the Vietnam War songs identified by the VWSP are released in the post-war period, showing how pervasive the war has become, from looking at veteran issues, to comparing to contemporary events.
What are three of your personal favorites in the project?
“Incoming” (1969) by Emily Strange & Barbara Hager, recorded on personal tape in Vietnam. This is a rare and unique recording of active service females performing a song in Vietnam, given to me by Emily Strange, and available on my YouTube channel. I really enjoyed talking to Emily about this special recording, and she gave me photos of her and Barbara playing at their base in Vietnam, which can also be seen on the video. With humour, they described an incoming attack on their base in Vietnam.
“Bring the Boys Home” (1971) by Freda Payne – Vietnam War soul, gospel, and funk songs is one of my favourite areas, with great tunes and interesting themes. This one has a somewhat upbeat tone, despite the serious and depressing lyrics. Payne emotionally pleads with the government to end the war and stop the senseless killing.
“Let’s Send Batman to Vietnam” (1967) by the Seeds of Euphoria – this one appeals to the record collector in me – very obscure, novelty, and lots of political references – as suggested by the title, the group advises president LBJ to send Batman and Robin to Vietnam to solve the problem. It’s garage rock, which is another of my favourite Vietnam War genres – musically great to listen to, and themes related to draft-age 60s youth artists.
What are some of your favourite record stores in the country?
My wife and I have travelled through around 40 states and hundreds of cities with stores, and have had some big wins, walking out with decent stacks of Vietnam and political records, and other music I’m interested in, there are so many stores to call out. Just a few recent ones are Bananas Records Vinyl Warehouse in St. Petersburg, FL, Trolley Stop Record Shop in Oklahoma City, OK, Josie Records in Tulsa, OK, and the Record Archive in Rochester, NY.
But my favourites will remain my local spots in Texas that I visit a lot, especially Waterloo Records in Austin, which does regular in-stores with both local and national touring artists and has a well-organised system for checking new arrivals for second-hand singles and LPs. They recently announced new ownership after 42 years, and a new location, so fingers-crossed that works out. Other good Austin stores are Breakaway Records and End of an Ear. In Fort Worth, I usually visit Doc’s Records & Vintage, in Houston Cactus Music, and Sig’s Lagoon Record Shop, and in Corpus Christi Hybrid Records.
►Book Corner
Doctor Woman Of The Cumberlands
by May Cravath Wharton, M.D.
Year: 1953 Pages: 214
Publisher: Uplands Cumberland Mountain Sanitorium
Sometimes we reminisce about the old days and how they were better, or suggest that modern technology can be a hindrance to a healthy person. You can read for hours about the dangers of screen time on a human or how modern medicine has gotten it wrong. I’ve been guilty of holding views like this before, after all if something worked for hundreds of years then why did we think we could improve it? Well this book shows how some of those old systems are romanticized when we look back at them. The people in the Cumberland mountains of Tennessee were in dire need of modern health care methods, and this book shows how a few miles in the mountains can show a difference of 50 years in technology.
Dr. May Cravath Wharton moved to the Cumberlands in 1917 when her husband, Edwin, got a job as the principle of a boarding academy in the mountains. The students were children from the region and many had little to no other education options. This area was what we could call impoverished by today’s standards, none of the houses had running water and most of them were deep in the woods only accessed by hours long travel over rope bridges and horse paths. Dr. May started off by teaching basic health classes to the girls at the Academy and quickly became an in demand doctor among the mountain people. This book is full of stories where she gets woken up in the night to travel hours to a small shack to offer medical service to families in need. Often these families only contacted her as a last resort because they were fiercely independent and religious and were wary of doctors.
Edwin passed away suddenly in 1920 and with her position at the Academy coming to an end she considered leaving the mountains to start a practice in a city, but after years of helping the mountain people they convinced her to stay and continue to serve them as doctor, so she started a tiny 3 room “hospital” near the Academy. So many of the people she helped had basic medical problems that they didn’t know there were fixes to. Initially she ran clinics to remove infected tonsils and offer help during the 1919 Flu Pandemic. They started outreach programs to give basic medical care to small communities and teach the younger people of the mountains basic nursing and medicine so they could rely on each other more.
Over the course of the book the hospital grows from a three room house to an actual hospital and annex by 1938 with enough beds to help anyone who came needing help. It’s an amazing story of being able to offer education and help to communities that needed it without exploiting them in the process. The major thing I’ll remember about this book is the many stories Dr May has of being summoned by a young boy to travel to a house to help a family and the often intense situations she was flung into. These stories are too many to summarize, but you can borrow this book yourself from archive.org or download a PDF from my website dollarcountry.org.
Thanks for reading this, I put a lot of work into it and I hope you enjoyed it. Most of my work is offered for free to all, if you would like to help support this work I do then please consider joining my patreon or donating directly.
-Franklin