Friend only to the undertaker

mieyeed
Jun 23
4 min read

Eighth in a series of posts about Protest Music for the Current Crisis.

One could wish fervently that this song would never have to be played again, but fifty-five years after its first release, War, has all the power, relevence and awful truth that it did when it went to the top of the charts for Edwin Starr.

Edwin Starr was born Charles Edwin Hatcher in Nashville in 1942. He changed his name after a stint in the Army when he joined Bill Doggett's group. Starr recorded a solo album for the Detroit label Ric-Tic (later bought out by Motown's Berry Gordy), and in 1965 had a hit with the single Agent Double-O-Soul (a favorite of my youth). He wrote the hit song Oh How Happy for The Shades of Blue, and himself had another hit in 1969 with Twenty-Five Miles. Many of his recorded singles are considered classics in Britain's Northern Soul movement.

WAR

Written in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War by the amazing hitmakers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, it was released initially by the Temptations on their album Psychedelic Shack. Motown received hundreds of letters begging the company to release the Temptations' version as a single because of its anti-war message. The label didn't want to risk sullying the Temptations reputation, and decided not to release it.

Starr, who was by now a Motown artist, after his label was purchased, heard about the pleas for a single, and offered to record a version. Whitfield produced the song with a renewed power and intensity not evident in the original. And it's this forceful production that likely made the song a hit, and gave it its staying power.

The Temptations version used a stripped-down studio band and a near-novelty "hup-two" background accent. Whitfield coached Starr into a James Brown-style shout, and used a martial drumbeat, wailing electric guitar and syncopated horns to hammer the message home. And Starr's passionate cry for an answer is at the heart of the song. Its insistent musical question, "War. What is it good for?" would soon be ringing across the airwaves.

This was a moment in broadcast history when a song, with an anti-war, anti-government message could soar to the top of the charts, and Starr's take on War did. Released in July 1970, it hit number one on the Billboard charts in August, and remained there for three weeks.

Lip-synching the most successful protest song ever released.

Billy Bragg (who namechecks the Motown writing team in his song, Levi Stubb's Tears) had a different answer to Whitfield and Strong's musical question in his song North Sea Bubble. "War, what is it good for," Bragg sang, and answered, "It's good for business."

The song has been covered by Bruce Springsteen, Joan Osborne and Boys II Men, among others, but when it has returned to prominence, in the many wars since, it's Starr's version that rings most true.

War, huh, yeah

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing, uhh

War, huh, yeah

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing

Say it again, y'all

War, huh (good God)

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing, listen to me, oh

War, I despise

'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives