- Oscar Brand
-
Tell It To The Marines
- Bless'em All Time: 1:27
- Call Out the Corps Time: 1:06
- Cuts and Guts Time: 1:26
- Dinkie Die Time: 0:49
- Gee But I Wanna Go Home Time: 0:58
- Honey Baby Time: 0:58
- Marine's Hymn Time: 1:03
- Marine's Hymn [Instrumental] Time: 0:31
- Moving On Time: 1:07
- Old Number Nine Time: 1:02
- Pua Pua Time: 1:21
- The Man in the Moon Time: 0:57
- The Reserves Lament Time: 0:49
- The United States Marines Time: 0:51
- Wake Island Time: 1:23
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Tell it to the
MARINES
Liner Notes by Oscar Brand
A bold young man about to enter the Louisiana swamps expressed a fear that he
might be bitten by the poisonous snakes which abound there. An old-timer
reassured him, "All you have to do is make a cross-cut on the place where you
was bit, and then you can suck out the venom." The young man was unconvinced,
"Supposing he bites me where I can't reach?" "Ah," replied the old-timer,
"That's how you find out who your friends are."
The Marines need no such test for determining their loyalties. They have but one
love, The Corps. Everything else is one hundred percent snake -- the Army, the
Navy, the Coast Guard, the Civilians and the Enemy. The Corps has survived
continuous efforts to abolish it -- including powerful attacts by Andrew
Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The Corps has survived
thousands of attempts to wipe out its personnel in individual combat, by enemy
action and barroom brawls.
The "insidious" network of buffs reaches into every walk of American life. I had
no sooner announced my intention of recording an album of Marine songs when
radio interviewer Ray Heatherton was singing Bless 'em All into my ear. On NBC's
Today show, Eugene Jones, the seemingly harmless producer, slipped me a
recording of Marines singing in a New Zealand Rest Camp, May 9th, 1943, after
the landings on Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Most of the singers were killed in the
next action at New Georgia, but their songs survived.
Knowing that Alvin Josephy, one of Time's senior editors, had been a
correspondent for the Marines, I approached him diffidently and mentioned my
project. He immediately pressed into my hot palm a long playing dub of the same
New Zealand jam session -- with additional songs on it.
From Harold Peterson, of the Society of Military Collectors and Historians, came
the priceless mimeographed folio published by the Death Rattler's Squadron which
flew in Korea. The foreword of this collection of ribald, scurrilous and
rollicking Marine songs read in part, "Even as we breathe in the breath, taking
in the sight of a 40 mm. flak trap, or drink in the beauty of graceful arching
tracers, these familiar strains are what make it worthwhile."
Other sources included civilians Jerry Wenker of Cambridge and Peter Seeger of
Beacon, NY, whose World War II Letter From The Marianas hinted at many Marine
Songs as yet uncollected. And it was advertising man Robert W. Block who told us
about the secret horde of 1200 wire reels of Marine songs, hidden in the Library
of Congress vaults because the language was unbecoming and over soldierly.
Finally let us thank the Marine Corps who made these songs .. Semper Fidelis.
Oscar Brand