Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" is a song written by Pete Seeger in 1967 and made famous because of its censorship from a popular television program of that era.
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[edit] Story
The song tells the story of a platoon wading in a river in Louisiana on a practice patrol in 1942. Imperiously ignoring his sergeant's concerns, the captain orders the platoon to continue with himself in the lead, until they are finally up to their necks. Suddenly, the Captain drowns and the sergeant instantly orders the unit to turn back to the original shore. It turns out the Captain was not aware that the river was deeper with a joining stream upriver. The narrator declines to state an obvious moral, but intimates from what he has read in the paper that his nation itself is being led into similar peril by authoritarian fools. Each verse ends with a line noting that "the big fool said to push on.", except for the final verse, which changes to the present tense, and the refrain "the big fool says to push on." The story is similar to the Ribbon Creek incident, which occurred in 1956.
[edit] Significance
The song was considered symbolic of the Vietnam War and President Lyndon Johnson's policy of escalation, then widely seen as pushing the United States deeper into the increasingly unpopular war. The captain's criticism of a dissenting sergeant as a "Nervous Nelly" in the song's third verse appears to mimick Johnson's epithet for critics of the war.[1] Seeger often performed the song at concerts and rallies, and in late 1967 he was invited to perform on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Seeger chose to perform "Big Muddy", and sang the song on the taping of the CBS show in September, 1967 but CBS management objected to its political tone, and censored the song prior to broadcast. Following the strong objections of the show's hosts, CBS later relented, and allowed Seeger to come back and sing the song on the Brothers' February 25, 1968 show. This broadcast is included on the DVD The Best of the Smothers Brothers.
[edit] Cover versions
Richard Shindell recorded a cover of this song on his 2005 album Vuelta. The song was covered by Dick Gaughan in his 1997 album Sail On. John McCutcheon covered it on his 2007 album This Fire.
Bruce Springsteen, who would later record an album of Seeger-related songs, used the line "Waist deep in the big muddy" as the chorus for his 1992 song, "Big Muddy."
The song was translated into French by Graeme Allwright under the title "Jusqu'à la ceinture".
[edit] External links
- Lyrics of Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- Seeger documentary, includes this song
- Seeger's account of the song's composition and original television appearance
[edit] References
- ^ Destler, Gelb and Lake. Our Own Worst Enemy - The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984), 62.
