Origins: Send Me Back to Georgia (Si Kahn)

Subject: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Knit_aholic
Date: 18 May 09 - 07:33 AM

Hi all, I'm new to Mudcat.
I have been listening to Roy Bailey singing the song "Send Me Back To Georgia" and was wondering what the story was behind the song? I guess from the lyrics it is something about The US army going into El Salvadore and killing farmers - does any one know when this happened and / or know of any links on the 'net that I can go to to see more of the story? It has really piqued my interest. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Azizi
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:06 AM

Hello, Knit_aholic. Welcome to Mudcat.

Mudcat member katlaughing mention's Roy Bailey's "Send Me Back To Georgia" is mentioned in this archived Mudcat thread from 2001:

thread.cfm?threadid=41366#596813 Lyr Req: For composed song

Here's an excerpt of that post:

" Roy Bailey is one of England's very finest singers with a voice that is both beautifully melodious and capable of expressing a broad range of emotions. For a long time he has been best known as one of the finest interpreters of contemporary topical folk song but he started his career singing traditional songs and this album reissued from 1976 is mostly traditional.

"ROY BAILEY Fuse CFCD 399 What You Do With What You've Got $18.98 15 tracks, 61 mins, essential. Roy Bailey is one of England's great musical treasures .This release is a best of collection featuring 14 tracks from various recordings made between 1975 and 1991 plus a live 1991 recording of Rolling Home. The songs featured are by some of our greatest topical songwriters including Leon Rosselson, Si Kahn, John Pole, Robb Johnson, Jack Warshaw, Fred Small and others. Roy also updates the traditional song Hard Times Of Old England. The arangements are varied ranging from the unaccompanied Patience Kershaw to a full electric band on Send Me Back To Georgia with the wonderful churning accordion of John Kirkpatrick. Other tracks feature the guitar of Martin Carthy, the hammered dulcimer of Fi Fraser and others. If you are already a Bailey fan you will have almost everything here. If you have not heard him before prepare yourself for one of the most eloquent voices in topical song. (FS) "

-snip-

I haven't been successful in finding the words to " Send Me Back To Georgia" online. If you have those words, can you please post them?

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Azizi
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:37 AM

Here's another thread about Roy Bailey that mentions "Send Me Back To Georgia".


thread.cfm?threadid=23435

Lyr Req: Something after Roy Bailey

**

That thread lists "Send Me Back To Georgia" as a song on the "Band of Hope CD "Rythm and Reds", (Band of Hope were Bailey, Carthy, Swarbrick, Kirkpatrick and Stephan Hannigan). The song is listed followed by (Si Kahn)/ I'm not sure what that name in parenthesis means.

**
On that thread, GeorgeH (who I don't believe posts on Mudcat anymore) is a key informant about that album. George H responds to another poster who asked "Was there something radical about that album" with this comment: "Yup, I'd say there's some sort of radical/socialist idea shaping most of what Roy does". It does set out to be a "political" album. Martin Carthy is also overtly radical/socialist; Kirkpatrick and Swarb seem less overtly so.

In a later post to that thread, GeorgeH wrote that "The parallels between "[The Ballad of] Vic Williams" and "Send Me Back to Georgia" are fascinating in themselves". In another previous post to that thread, GeorgeH wrote that Vic Williams "Went AWOL during the Gulf War, returned to his unit at the end of the conflict. Gaoled in a classic British miscarriage of justice (apart from anything else the conflict was unlawful since the UN was acting in clear violation of its own charter). And as I recall there was a further furore when Amnesty International adopted him as a Prisoner of Conscience."

-snip-

Unfortunately, neither GeorgeH nor any other poster explains what the similarities between those two songs mean. But one can presume that there were thematic similarities.

(Of course, "one" can be mistaken when she/he "assumes" things.)

**

Btw, Knit_aholic - I'm providing links for your information and others' information. IMO, it's fine to start a new thread about Roy Bailey, particularly since this thread focuses on a particular song.

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Azizi
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:39 AM

Btw 2, the song "Send Me Back To Georgia" is a different song than this Blues song with a very similar name:


GONNA SEND YOU BACK TO GEORGIA
(Hound Dog Taylor)

Yeah I'm gonna send you back to Georgia
Honey that's where you belong
I'm gonna send you back to Georgia
Honey that's where you belong
Hang around here baby
And break up my happy home

I swear my mama told me
And your daddy too
As soon as you get a-what you want back
The way she's gonna do
I'm gonna send you back to Georgia
Honey that's where you belong
Hang around here baby
And break up my happy home
(repeat after break)

Goodby little woman
Is all I have to say
Give me back what I brought you
And be on your merry way
I'm gonna send you back to Georgia
Honey that's where you belong
Hang around here babe
And break up my happy home

http://www.keno.org/hound_dog_taylor/gonnasendyoubacktogeorigia.htm

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Knit_aholic
Date: 18 May 09 - 06:46 PM

Yeah, that song above is not it I'm afraid... I am def after "send me back to Georgia" about a US soldier sent to El Salvadore and he ends up just having to shoot farmers. I'll try to post the words a bit later today.   I am after links or info in regards to the actual event of the US going into El Salvadore.
Thanks everyone so far who has posted though, I really appreciate it. :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:53 PM

Lyrics and note to Si Kahn's song here:

Send me back to Georgia.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Knit_aholic
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:20 AM

Thanks Stewie, that's the song and it's a good start. do you know when the military went into El Salvador as "advisors"?

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 21 May 09 - 06:09 AM

Another note not yet added to My Songbook:

[1983:] President Reagan once described the Vietnam catastrophe as 'that noble cause'. Recently he has called Somoza's guardsmen, again killing their compatriots in Nicaragua under CIA auspices, 'freedom fighters'. Now he speaks eloquently of 'preserving freedom' in El Salvador for which more hundreds of millions of dollars are required. Salvadoran freedom is to be preserved in the tested Vietnam style. [...] Again US policy knows what is best for others, in the US national interest, while knowing nothing of the others, their history, culture, daily life and bitter needs. [...]
El Salvador is slightly bigger than Wales and even more beautiful and mountainous, blessed with a benign climate, fertile soil, lakes, rivers and magical trees. A country like a garden, a rural society, where most of the five million inhabitants live in destitution. For 162 years Salvador has been ruled by and for an oligarchy of landowners and its allied military. The last collected statistics in 1971 show how this works. Eight per cent of the top citizens received fifty per cent of the national income. Twenty thousand farm properties occupied seventy-five per cent of the land, leaving the rest for 330,000 small farms. Sixty-five per cent of the rural population had become landless seasonal labourers.
There was no peaceful way to change this permanent greedy imbalance of wealth and opportunity. Elections were a sham, ballot boxes invariably stuffed to suit the ruling caste, the swindle enforced by the military. Orderly protest marches ended in massacres by the police. Strikes were broken by the army, strikers shot and imprisoned. The majority of the Salvadoran people could live without hope, or rebel. [...] By now, there is no pretense of law. Salvador is ruled by terror alone. The people have no protection, except the Salvadoran Catholic Church, a moral and humanitarian support for which the Church pays in the death toll of its clergy. Doctors, nurses, medical students are murdered for giving their professional help to the poor. Rule by terror threatens anyone and everyone apart from those who use terror and rely on it. [At the Salvadoran Commission of Human Rights you] can read random selections from hundreds of sworn accounts of atrocity. You can study photo albums of the murdered. [...]
As wars go this one is minor so far, sporadic attacks with relatively light casualties on both sides. The guerrillas are destroying bridges, dams, pylons, factories, crops, striking at the wealth of the ruling caste. The real war is waged on the defenseless population by the government's security forces. Although the security forces have American planes, helicopters, bombs, mortars, machine guns, splendid rifles and unlimited ammunition, they are not very successful against the guerrillas, but hideously successful against the citizens - the Church estimates thirty-five to forty-five thousand unarmed civilian dead since 1979. (Martha Gellhorn, 'Rule by Terror', reprinted in 'The Face of War', 1998, p 323ff.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Knit_aholic
Date: 01 Jun 09 - 05:33 AM

Thank you Suzanne, that does help a lot!

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 01:46 AM

No one has mentioned why the song was written. Unfortunately, there are lots of other conversations that have nothing to do with the question. ??

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 02:11 AM

"No one has mentioned why the song was written." The song was written because Si Kahn was opposed to the American intervention in El Salvador. Next question....

Subject: Lyr Add: SEND ME BACK TO GEORGIA (Si Kahn)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 03:03 AM

For the record, here are the lyrics posted at mysongbook.de
Susanne doesn't mind our posting lyrics from her Website.


SEND ME BACK TO GEORGIA
(Si Kahn)
As recorded by Roy Bailey on "Band of Hope" (1994)

I was raised on grits and Jesus, my country wrong or right
Just a poor North Georgia farm boy, scared to death and quick to fight
Mama said, He's born to trouble, Papa said, Low down and mean
So I joined up in the army soon as I turned seventeen

CHORUS: Won't you send me back to Georgia
Before I fight another day.
Let the water from the mountains
Wash the bloodstains all away.

In a place I'd never heard of, that they call El Salvador
Where the mountains look like home and the fields all smell of war
They may say we're just advisors, wash their hands of all the dead
But when you see the things we're doing, Lord, it's hard to turn your head

I was proud to be a soldier, I was proud to hold a gun
But there's a difference between fighting and just shooting people down
Well, I'll never be a preacher, but I do know wrong from right
And a war against poor farmers - that ain't no war I want to fight

Subject: RE: Origins: Send Me Back To Georgia
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 03:21 AM

Now that San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero is being seriously considered for sainthood, the story of El Salvador in the 1980s is being told again. Romero became archbishop in 1977, and he was assassinated 24 March 1980. In February, 1980, Romero wrote to U.S. President Jimmy Carter warning against the military aid the U.S. Government was giving to El Salvador's repressive regime.

I have a friend who lived in El Salvador at the time, an American woman married to an Salvadoran. She was there during part of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-92), and she saw dead bodies in the street every day.

With the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. began to give military aid to the El Salvador regime, hoping to keep communism out of Central America. U.S. aid continued through the 1980s. The 1989 murder of Jesuit priests probably triggered the ending of U.S. aid.

More at http://www.pbs.org/itvs/enemiesofwar/elsalvador2.html

-Joe-