Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald | |
|---|---|
 Country Joe McDonald | |
| Background information | |
| Born | January 1, 1942 Washington, D.C. |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, political activist |
Country Joe McDonald (born Joseph Allen McDonald, January 1, 1942 in Washington, DC) was the leader and lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe & the Fish.[1]
Bio
He started his career busking on Berkeley, California's famous Telegraph Avenue in the early 1960s.[1] His father is Worden McDonald, of Scottish Presbyterian heritage. His mother was the late Florence Plotnick (McDonald), the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, who served for many years on the Berkeley city council. Both of his parents were active in progressive politics. As of 2007, Country Joe still lives in Berkeley, California.
Career
Country Joe has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 40 years. He and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe & the Fish which became a pioneer psychedelic rock band with their eclectic performances at The Avalon Ballroom, The Fillmore, Monterey Pop Festival and both the original and the reunion Woodstock Festivals.
Their best-known song is his "The "Fish" Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam Veterans of the 1960s and 1970s. He is also known for "The Fish Cheer" which was a cheerleader-style call-and-response with the audience where Joe spelled out "fish" ("Give me an F!").
The cheer was on the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die, being played right before the song on the LP of the same name. The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live. During the summer of 1968 the band played on the Schaefer Music Festival tour.[2] Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested before one of the shows to spell the word “fuck” instead of “fish.” Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Beer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. The Ed Sullivan Show then canceled a previously scheduled appearance by Country Joe and the Fish and told the band to keep the money they had already been paid in exchange for never playing on the show.[2] The change of the cheer from “fish” to “fuck” would continue at most of the band's live shows throughout the years, including Woodstock and the Isle of Wight Festival.
Joe went on to have a long solo career with key albums including:
- Thinking of Woody Guthrie (1969) – recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, which at the time was a very odd choice of location for a hippie songster to make an album of leftist anthems
- War War War (1971) – a tribute to the World War I anti-war verse of British poet Robert W. Service set to music
- Incredible Live! Country Joe" (1972)
- Hold On It's Coming – songs about the West Coast hippie movement
- Superstitious Blues – with Jerry Garcia playing guitar on some tracks
- Paradise With an Ocean View (1977) – included the landmark environmental activist protest song "Save the Whales"
- Paris Sessions – landmark feminism, with a female band, singing songs, written by Joe, including "Sexist Pig".
In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic "Muskrat Ramble", co-written by Kid Ory. The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court however upheld McDonald's laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of "Fixin'", with the same section in question, for some three decades without bringing a suit until 2003, and dismissed the suit. In 2006, Ory was ordered to pay McDonald $750,000 for attorney fees, and had to sell her copyrights to do so.
In 2004, Country Joe re-formed some original members of Country Joe and The Fish as the Country Joe Band – Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh. The band toured Los Angeles, Berkeley, Bolinas, Sebastopol, Grants Pass, Eugene, Portland and Seattle. They then made a 10-stop tour of the United Kingdom and played at the Isle of Wight and London. Following that came the New York tour which included a Woodstock reunion performance followed by an appearance at the New York State Museum in Albany. Returning to the West Coast the band played in Marin County and Mendocino County, California, the World Peace Music Awards in San Francisco and at the Oakland Museum as part of an exhibit on the Vietnam War.
In the spring of 2005, McDonald joined a larger protest against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts at the California State Capital Building.
In the fall of 2005, political commentator Bill O'Reilly compared McDonald[3] to Cuban President Fidel Castro, remarking on McDonald's involvement in Cindy Sheehan's protests against the Iraq War.[4]
Family
McDonald's daughter, Seven, is a columnist for the LA Weekly. He has two other children, Devin and Tara.
References
- ^ a b Richard Brenneman, "Country Joe McDonald Revives Anti-War Anthem", Berkeley Daily Planet, April 16, 2004, accessed July 18, 2007.
- ^ a b Country Joe McDonald, "That Notorious Cheer", accessed October 10, 2007.
- ^ http://www.countryjoe.com/gijoe.htm
- ^ http://mediamatters.org/items/200510210003
External links
- Country Joe's official site
- CJFishlegacy.com
- Live Music Archive Country Joe's section of archive.org's free live concert recordings.