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Open Letter To The President

Roy C
Language: English


Roy C

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È una canzone del 1971 che si riferisce alla guerra in VietNam. Recentemente è stata inserita nella raccolta "Does Anybody Know I'm Here? Vietnam Through The Eyes of Black America", Ace/Kent, 2005.

Roy C


Soul singer Roy C., born Roy Charles Hammond in Georgia, 1939, pleaded with the US president to end the war in Vietnam, in the protest song "Open Letter to the President" - released in 1971 on the New York label Alaga Records (# 1006) which he founded a year before in 1970. Thus, he presumably addressed his open letter to Richard Nixon, in the White House since January 1969. Roy C. recorded under the name The Honeydrippers, releasing the 1973 single "Impeach the President", about Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Earlier in his career he performed in the 1950s group The Genies.

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In the first two verses of the song Roy C. imagined a world in which there would be "no more fighting in Vietnam" and that "everybody gonna be free". In the spoken-word segment at the end of the track, Roy C. called on the president to pay attention to all the protesters in the street and to "bring all our boys home". Note the reference to South Africa, one of the early songs to highlight apartheid. It also refered to the treatment of African-American in the US, and thus, another song that combined the issues of Vietnam and civil rights.

Vietnam War Song Project
People get ready, there's a new day a-comin'
Everybody's gonna be free,
a better day for you and me
Everybody's gonna be free
Everybody's gonna be free
Oh Lord, have mercy..

There'll be no more fightin' – in Viet Nam
Everybody's gonna be free – all over this land
Everybody's gonna be free
Oh Lord have mercy
Everybody's gonna be free, yeah
Everybody's gonna be free..
There'll be no more fightin' – in Viet Nam
Everybody's gonna be free – all over this land

Listen, Mr. President, yeah, this is an open letter to you
I wanna know, why don't you stop the fightin' -an' bring all our boys home, that's right...
but Mr. President, oh can't you see -all the protesters in the streets?
an' look at all the hungry people – the fatherless children -with no shoes on their feet
Can't you hear them singin'? I can, they're sayin':
I wanna be free - (gonna be free)
Everybody wanna be free - (gonna be free)
Everywhere you go they wanna be free (gonna be free)

Way down in Georgia - (they wanna be free)
In South Africa - (they wanna be free)
New York ain't no better - (they wanna be free)
Up and down the streets of Harlem free!

Contributed by Alessandro - 2007/7/6 - 23:56




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