Seems like a good day for a march, even if it’s April.
John Phillip Sousa wrote a LOT of military / march music, and like them or not, he had quite an influence on the popular music at that time. He and his band actually toured and played for large crowds. He also didn’t write ALL his music down – that is to say, his music as published and sold was often not how he had his band played it. The performance that people paid to come and listen to had some subtle details changed to make them better – people always said that they never sounded the same when he played them than when other bands of similar size and skill played his purchased sheet-music. He knew how to protect his franchise. This particular march isn’t a lot better or worse than any of his other works, but was selected because of the title. Enjoy

The Man Behind The Gun

John Philip Sousa, 1852 – 1932
He was a US Marine, one of the all-time best trap shooters, a writer, opposed the mechanical recording of music, and overall was an interesting guy. If you liked military / march music, he’s an icon. If you don’t, and claim he only wrote two marches in a hundred variations each, you still cannot deny his popularity and influence in his day.

Elton John has always been kind of hit or miss for me. He’s got some songs I really like, some I can’t stand, and like a lot of long-timer writers / performers, a fair body of work I’ve never heard before. This is one of the latter. I was looking for something else, and I came across this. Not sure just what I think of it. Classic Elton John style, but I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to say. The words are clear enough, but the meaning? Not so much. I can think of a couple of reasonable interpretations, but nothing for certain. Seemed like a good Friday Gun-song choice to kick around a bit.

Elton John – My Father’s Gun

Elton John, of course, is one of the big names in popular music, who should need no introduction except to those on the “whipper-snapper” end of the age-range. Politically controversial and outspoken, he’s been doing his thing and having people listen to him for a long time, now. Love his work or hate it, he’s talented, accomplished, well-known, and rich.

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.

A fun classic from a simpler time, the 1950s, when a song about guns wasn’t about bust’n a cap in sum’uns ass. Proper etiquette was involved, like meeting pappy, the guy with the 16 ga “choked down like a rifle.”

Tennessee Ernie Ford – Shotgun Boogie

Tennessee Ernie Ford was VERY talented, as a singer, writer, and performer – when he was doing radio, starting in the late 1930s, he’d do all sorts of voices, he sung a wide variety of country, gospel, and popular songs, including famous ones like “16 tons” and “The ballad of Davy Crockett”. He had a marvelous deep baritone/bass voice, but could do all sorts of “character voices” with it, and you can tell when he’s smiling as he sings. He was still releasing music into the 1970s. He even sung things like When the Ship Hit the Sand with Dean Martin in the 60’s; good use of humor and double entendre. He was also a bombardier on a B29 in the Pacific during WW II. If you want your kids to dance to something, try some of his “boogies.” I’ve got his “Ultimate Collection” on the Zune in the car – when I have to give my (grade-school age)  kids a ride somewhere with one or two of their friends, I try to play something “odd” like Ernie, and I always get positive comments. Their parents usually get a kick out of it, too.

This one went up in 2009. Kind a fun poke at the anti-gunner sorts with self-deprecating humor. He even has a few I’d like to try, and never have.

Steve Lee – I like Guns

Steve Lee is not a big household name in the US, hasn’t been in the music biz big-time for decades or anything, he’s just a working Aussie country music guy, but the video is a hoot. Just the thing to bend the statists with.

Classic spaghetti-western soundtrack stuff, here. You can smell the horse-sweat, the gun smoke, and the cattle, feel the mounting tension, hear the clink of spurs, see the MEN riding into the action.

Ennio Morricone – Guns Don’t Argue

Morricone thought of the soundtracks he wrote as being “working music,” what he did to pay the bills, not “real” music. But he did a LOT of that working music – he wrote the scores for more than 500 movies and TV series during his life. His name is listed as the music dude on a seemingly endless list of classic and/or infamous movies, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and The Thing to Kill Bill.

He’s always had some odd songs, many of them are disturbing or off-beat. Again, another artist that doesn’t just write and sing popcorn-brained “oh, baby, do-it-to-me, baby!” songs I’ve always like singers with clear voices who are performing to sing, not scream or get autotuned into key. He doesn’t seem to have (at least to my ear) an amazing range or anything, but he uses what he’s got well.

Warren Zevon – Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

Interesting pics from the era and the place being sung about. A turbulent time – the effects of European colonialism ending meeting the ideology of communism in a place ruled by tribalism and the inheritor of a thousand years of depredation by Arab and Islamic slavers. It’s testament to human toughness and pig-headedness that anyone survived there, and it is only a bad as it is, and not worse.

I’ve always been a Tull fan – I mean, how many rock bands have a lead FLUTE? Their songs usually say a lot more than “hey, baby-baby” ad nauseum.

Jethro Tull – I am your gun for some Friday tunage.

For those not familiar with the group – The lead guy (singer / flutist) is Ian Anderson. Jethro Tull, for whom the group is named, was an agriculturalist from the early 1700s. The group was so bad early on they had to keep changing names in order to get a gig at the same place twice. Jethro Tull was they name they had when it finally all came together for them, so they were sort of stuck with it.