DISCOGRAPHY > ALBUMS

1965 — Folk 'n Roll

(1/4) > >>

Admin:


1965

FOLK 'N ROLL — LIBERTY LRP-3431 (M); LST-7431 (S) (November)


• I Found A Girl
(Phil Sloan - Steve Barri)

• Hang On Sloopy (My Girl Sloopy)
(Russell-Farrell)

• I Can't Wait to Love
(Jan Berry - Jill Gibson - George Tipton)

• Eve of Destruction
(Phil Sloan)

• It's a Shame to Say Goodbye
(Jill Gibson - Don Altfeld)

• Where Were You When I Needed You
(Phil Sloan - Steve Barri)

• A Beginning from an End
(Jan Berry - Roger Christian - Cleve Hermann - George Tipton)

Yesterday
(McCartney - Lennon)

• The Universal Coward
(Jan Berry - Jill Gibson - George Tipton)

• It Ain't Me Babe
(Bob Dylan)

• Folk City
(Jan Berry - Roger Christian)

• Turn, Turn, Turn
(Seeger)
_____________________________

Produced by Jan Berry for Screen Gems, Inc.

Arranged by Jan Berry and George Tipton

Engineers: Bones Howe and Lanky Linstrot

Liner Notes: Uncredited

Cover Design: Woody Woodward

All Photography: Ken Kim

CHART: BILLBOARD #145 — CASH BOX #87

Kentucky Surfer:
Very simply stated, this is my favorite Jan & Dean album. 

Ban n Bean:
That's something one doesn't read everyday.  I think it's better than some might give it credit for.  Certainly the subject matter has changed and I suspect that's what turns some people away.  The Hot Rod songs are gone.   The liner notes are a bit goofy with references to potest songs and may have also been a bit off-putting to the young generation.  Is the album a parody, not a parody or a mix of both?

As the USA population was in the process of polarizing, it was difficult or impossible to walk the line in-between.

I think it's a great production.  While the stereo mix at the time did no justice to the production (why was it done that way?  Haste?), the remixes on "All The Hits" compilation presents the tracks in all their glory.  A remix of the entire album would be greatly appreciated by these ears.

A bit of a mystery to me is the involvement of George Tipton.   I'll start a thread on him.

Mark A. Moore:
There is satire on Folk 'n Roll.

"The Universal Coward" in 1965 was a spoof of the growing anti-war movement. But on the same album, Jan included "Eve of Destruction" -- perhaps the most iconic anti-war anthem of the era -- a Yin and Yang statement.

1965 was the first big year in the social (mainly youth) backlash against Vietnam. By 1966, statistics showed that people against the war were joining a growing majority.

Yet in early 1966, Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler's patriotic, pro-soldier "Ballad of the Green Berets" spent a whopping five straight weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts.

Not unlike Jan's 1965 "Universal Coward," The Beach Bums did a short-lived Sadler parody in 1966 called "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret," about a draft dodger.

The country was still divided.

Jan & Dean's "Only A Boy" -- about a young American soldier killed in Vietnam -- came out in 1967.

The following year in 1968, a rendition of Sadler's song was featured in a John Wayne Vietnam war movie called The Green Berets -- a film that sought to portray America's defense of South Vietnam against the Communist North as a noble and just cause. 1968 saw the height of America's military involvement in Vietnam . . . The bloody Tet Offensive, etc.

From World War II to the present, Hollywood has a long tradition of churning out films covering the nation's current wars. Witness the recent Oscar-winning Hurt Locker.

owen:
Mark, where do you get your information that Universal Coward was intended as satire?

I am old enough to remember buying Folk N Roll when it first came out and being a) delighted that my heroes were moving with the times, and b) horrified that the embarrassing Universal Coward seemed to indicate they had joined the wrong camp. This was particularly so since I (and I suppose many others) were well aware that this was an "answer song" to Buffy Sainte-Marie's Universal Soldier, at a time when answer songs were a part of pop tradition.

If it was a joke then the humour was buried deeply enough for me to miss it at the time, and doubt its existence now.

(Sidenote: my interest in Dean as more than the amusing sidekick actually began back then when I found that he had insisted that the single didn't have his name on it, with the result that it was a Jan solo single.)

The fact that Jan recorded Only A Boy shortly afterwards might be taken as evidence that neither song was in fact intended as a joke but either as reflecting his political beliefs at that time, or as a cynical attempt to reach a new market that did have those political beliefs.

On the other hand, I have always seen Eve of Destruction as an intended joke, partly because it sounds so much like someone trying to sound like someone trying to sound like a "protest singer", and partly because it was written by PF Sloan about 6 months after he was writing surf songs for them. Maybe I was looking hopefully for humour where none was intended :)

The album does contain absolutely cracking versions of I Found a Girl and Where Were You When I Needed You though, both of which should have been big hits.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page