Friday Five: Songs About The Cold War

As an ’80s baby, I spent most of the Cold War being unborn. But recently I’ve taken an interest in learning more about this era. Sure, I could visit the library or talk to my parents, but what’s the fun in that? Why, I could just listen to some country music and get my information in three-minute bursts! There are enough Cold War songs to supersize this into a monthly playlist, but listening to them all has made me rather paranoid. So just to be safe, you might want to read this huddled under your desk.

• 5. “Ballad of Francis Powers (There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere)” – Red River Dave
  The Texan Red River Dave, aka David McEnery, was rather prolific in the field of topical songs; Emmett Till, Patty Hearst, Three Mile Island, and Amelia Earhart have all been the subject of McEnery’s work. He wrote this song about the U-2 spy plane incident and its downed pilot. With lyrics like “In a lonesome prison cell in godless Russia/Where no Bible ever speaks His name/There’s a boy who flew the U-2 for his country/To make sure that no Pearl Harbor comes again” this is propaganda music at its best. If you can’t get enough espionage songs, there’s always Red River Dave’s sequel, “The Trial of Francis Powers.”
• 4. “Let’s Keep the Communists Out” – Ferlin Husky (aka Terry Preston)
  Here’s a 1950 recitation imploring you—whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish—to “pray for those folks who live across the sea,” or else the pinkos will invade and take away Santa Claus (for reals). It would seem to follow the proletariat elves then will be freed from the shackles of capitalist gift production, but Husky/Preston doesn’t really get into specifics here.
• 3. “Relax and Take it Easy” – Tommy Duncan
  The Texas Playboy goes solo and tells his countrymen to calm down. If someone drops an atomic bomb on your sleepy town, “just sit back, enjoy the ride and bid the world goodbye.” Other times you need to chill: when your garage is on fire, and also if you come home and find some dude with your wife. Because, you know, those incidents are totally on par with worldwide nuclear warfare.
• 2. “No No Joe” – Hank Williams
  Luke the Drifter blasts Stalin with both barrels…then imagines some sort of coffee klatch in hell with Hitler and Mussolini “sittin’ around a fire.” Those dead dictators are kind of polite though, because they’re “saving a seat” for Stalin. I wonder what these guys think of the “no givesies” rule.
• 1. “The Great Atomic Power” – The Louvin Brothers
  Watch out for the “mushroom of destruction,” you guys. In the intervening years, this masterpiece been covered by Raul Malo, Elizabeth Cook, Southern Culture on the Skids, and others, making it one of the few Cold War songs to outlast the war itself.