Thursday, November 11, 2010

Patriotism - With Gene Marshall

On this national and international day of remembrance and patriotic thoughts and feelings, I thought I'd share a song titled "This is Your Country - This is My Country", sung by the always enjoyable voice of Gene Marshall:

The flip side, "The Hanging Tree", couldn't be on a more dissimilar subject. I'm most taken here by the way Gene Marshall sounds more or less happy during the first few lines. Perhaps he was sight-reading it, and didn't realize until the third or four lines that he was singing a first person ballad by a man about to be hanged. That ridiculous synth sound doesn't help, either, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a record that that particular sound would improve:

Download: Gene Marshall - The Hanging Tree

Play:   


On a side note, regarding the authors of these lyrics, does anyone name their children Bertha or Gertrude anymore?

1 comment:

Stu Shea said...

Wow. Two especially lame sides. I think that with a few exceptions, America deserves far better songs than have been written for it.

I remember in the early 1980s I knew a sweet young woman named Bertha. She died at a very early age from a terminal illness.