It doesn’t have the word “gun” in the title, but it’s definitely in the gun genre. I first heard it when I was in grade school, and I loved it. Loved the whole album. It is one of my son’s favorite today, along with Sink the Bismark. Clear words and singing, good story, with clean music and a rousing beat. We fired our guns and the British kept a’comming / wasn’t not as many as there was a while ago / fired once more and they begin to run’n / down the Mississip to the Gulf of Mexico.
Johnny Horton – Battle of New Orleans
Horton sung a lot of historical stuff, about battles, wars, mountain men, gold miners and various turning points and interesting points in history. His style is called rockabilly, and would have likely produce a lore more stuff and been an even bigger name if he’d not been killed at age 35 by a drunk driver in a head-on crash while crossing a bridge in 1960.
That’s one of my favorite ballads by Mr. Horton! “Sink The Bismark” has to be top, though. Much as I dislike country music, I will claim to be a diehard fan of Johnny Horton!
Here’s an epic version of “The Battle of New Orleans” (c’mon…who DOESN’T love Legos?):
Oh that is just CLASSIC! I will definitely have to show offspring-unit #2 THAT one!
Hmmm… I wonder what sort of correlation there is between music interests and book interests?
And, glad I could bring a smile and a good memory to you!
I guess it was just an early indicator of my interest in history. ‘Course, I had to get away from Public Education Establishment history classes before I actually started learning, but…as for music-book correlations, I like classic rock, history, sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, urban (stuff like Larry Correia writes), and post-apocalyptic survival. As long as its well written, edited, and plotted, of course.
That last set of qualifiers seems to limit things an AWFUL lot. But the rest of it sounds pretty good. I like the SteamPunk style, but don’t really do it myself – used to do SCA quite heavily. Some of my visualizations of characters in my story are somewhat steam-punk-esque. Visualizing that for Allonia headed for the BBQ on New Texas would be a pretty good image.
As for public school – I’m a teacher, or would be, if I could keep my mouth shut and toe the (liberal) line long enough to get a continuing contract. But I try to actually encourage critical thinking and personal responsibility, and, well…. (lead balloon, pregnant pole-vaulters, and all that). Mostly math and science, but also endorsed in Soc Stud and History. Let’s just say that I’m not quite the standard HS teacher.
Heh. Rock on, dude! I’ve had folks tell me I should go into teaching, mainly cuz I’ve usually got my nose buried in a WW2 history (just finished reading about the WASPs…now reading all of REH’s Solomon Kane stories. Talk about eclectic tastes!). I have a phobia of public speaking, though. And I doubt any school board would appreciate a history teacher who had a framed photo of Field Marshal Rommel hanging in a prominent place in his room. I know way too many people who still assume he was a Nazi general. Honestly, I think if you sat him, Eisenhower, Patton, and Churchill down in an Irish pub, within an hour the place would be in shambles, unconscious (former) patrons laying across various pieces of (former) furniture, all of them nursing a beer and laughing as they swapped stories. Yeah….it wouldnt’ do for a history teacher to pass out the history books (do kids even use books these days?) and then tell his students to not open them. Ever. LOL
The one history class I taught went well for 97% of the students. One got a little bent. It was US history, in 2004. I did things like look at “propaganda” when going over US social history, and used as example the “TIME” magazine’s “year in review in pictures”, and compared it to a “year in review” montage someone had put together for a conservative web-site. I had them compare imagery and music the two used to represent the year the world (and the kids) had just been through. It opened a LOT of eyes. Same year (with the Iraqi war), utterly different impression. Dead bodies and draped coffins vs smiling voters with purple fingers and toppling Sadam statues. Didn’t tell them which was “right,” just said “choose your data sources carefully.” Most of them got it.
I always kind of liked the Homer and Jethro parody version too, “The Boys from Camp Cucamonga.”
Johnny Horton had a premonition about dying in a head-on collision. He’d actually practice avoiding them, and sadly the fatal crash occurred on a one-lane bridge with no where for him to go to avoid striking the oncoming vehicle.
Never knew that. Dreams can be strange things….the first sub I was on was out on a mini-PAC (two month deployment prior to inactivation and decommissioning)…several weeks in, we were standing around shooting the breeze when someone mentioned having a weird dream about the sub having an accident and sinking. Couple of others chimed in. Over the next few watches (time measured in “watch cycles” on subs…we operated on an 18-hour day, long story, really screws up your internals when you get back into port though), guys would mention having a dream about our sub having an accident. I still remember my dream. We all laughed about it. Then the sub was rammed in Hong Kong harbor Nobody laughed for a while after that. Only time that’s ever happened to me….and I pray that it stays that way.
I remember listening to this song as a kid. I had a cassette tape, put out by the Disney Company, I think, of “military songs”. This, “The Marine’s Hymn”, “The Caissons Go Marching Along”, and others. I might have been as old as 5 or 6. I always loved the line about the alligator. 😀
Poking around on Google, it looks like the tape was “Yankee Doodle Mickey”. Apparently they’ve re-released it, without the Battle of New Orleans. Pity.