Buffy Sainte-Marie has been in the news recently because a documentary has cast strong doubt on her claim to indigenous ancestry. She has long claimed she was born on a Cree reservation in western Canada before being adopted by the Massachusetts couple who raised her, but relatives have always denied this. The Cree nation, for its part, has stood by her.
Whatever the truth, Sainte-Marie’s greatest contribution to the Great Folk Music Scare of the early 1960s was this protest song. A veteran of the folk music circuit, Sainte-Marie wrote this at a Toronto coffeehouse at least a year before it appeared on her debut album, “It’s My Way!” in 1964. Its first record release came a year earlier with a single by the Highwaymen, the folk quintet who had a hit with “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” in 1960. Their version didn’t chart.
Though the lyrics seem to call on individuals to lay down their arms, Sainte-Marie said her intended message was that democracies vote into power the people who take their nations to war. She never released the song as a single.
“Universal Soldier” proved more popular when Scottish folk singer Donovan released it on a British EP in 1965. It didn’t chart there, but as a single in the U.S. it reached No. 53 in Billboard, No. 45 in Cashbox. That was one of several covers recorded as the war in Vietnam heated up. Glen Campbell’s version made No. 45 on the Hot 100 the same year.
