Guest:

http://www.juneberry78s.com/otmsampler/otmsampta.html

Two good takes of it here (both are mentioned in the headnote to the NLCR songbook text). Just scroll down the page to "Battleship of Maine" by Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers, and then scroll just a little further to "Bloody War" by Jimmie Yates' Boll Weevils. "Battleship" is the more familiar version, similar to what Scotty Wiseman reworked as "That Crazy War," in the late 30s. Stringbean and I (great minds think alike) independently came up with nearly identical Vietnam remakes in 1969, and I recently revamped it for Iraq. Yates' version has similar lyrics but a very different arrangement, which sounds like a natural for western swing.

An mp3 of the version by Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles ("Fighting in the War with Spain") is on the net but I can't remember just where I downloaded it. I think it was from the music section at www.archive.org. Sound is rough, but the Watts records are all quite rare.

Additional songs from the NLCR songbook may be found on the same page at Juneberry, and there are 2 or 3 other sections of the site which contain oldtime music not duplicated on this page.