There’s a few songs called ‘Christmas in Vietnam’ out there -
one by Private Charles Bowen that appeared on Day 13 of the 2010 calendar
(unashamed plug for the 2010.blog
) - and indeed the Vietnam war produced a number of Christmas related records, let’s
not forget the mind-blowing ‘Christmas in the Jungle’ by Derrick Roberts from Day
10 of the 2007 Calendar (another unashamed link for the 2007.blog)
.
You can pretty much guess how this is going to pan out when
a spoken introduction tells you ’A lonely soldier lay dying in a fox hole in
Vietnam’ and sure enough the Gospel feel to this Soul song provides everything
you’d expect - good and bad - as the dying man and his buddy sing “Ohh – I know it’s Christmas
here in Vietnam’.
Released in 1967 this is ‘of its time’ admittedly, but it
still reminds us that men and women are out there this Christmas in other
deserts and jungles. Soul Searchers were apparently just Charles ‘Chuck’ Brown,
a musician from North Carolina who was highly thought of in Washington and
earned himself the epithet of ‘Godfather of Go Go’ on the east coast.
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