Unless you grew up in the ’60s, it’s hard to imagine how naive the Boomers were in their youth. They actually thought singing about peace could bring it about. Nowadays music venues are frequent targets for mass violence, from the Pulse nightclub to the Las Vegas country music festival to the Nova music festival in Israel. The mass shootings at U.S. bars and nightclubs are too numerous to list.
People yearn for peace just as much today as they always have, and many still find it in music, but I can’t imagine a song today doing what “One Tin Soldier” did. The child-like anti-war song reached the charts, by various artists, in either Canada or the U.S. five years running, from 1969 to 1974.
It started with Dennis Lambert, a songwriter and producer with partner Brian Potter penned hits for the Grass Roots, the Four Tops and Dusty Springfield and struck gold with “Rhinestone Cowboy” for Glen Campbell. Lambert, also an A&R man, wrote “One Tin Soldier” for a band he signed out of Canada, the Original Caste (not a great name, but they began as the North Country Singers, so at least an improvement). Their single made it to No. 34 on the Hot 100 in the U.S. in 1970, after reaching No. 5 in Canada in 1969.
The song was revived in 1971 by its inclusion in an independent counter-culture movie, “Billy Jack,” which used a cover with vocals by Jinx Dawson, lead singer in a heavy-for-its-day band called Coven. She was backed by studio musicians but insisted the band be credited. That version made it to No. 26 on the Hot 100.
The song was then covered by country singer Skeeter Davis, who took it to No. 54 on the country chart in 1972. The arrangement hardly differs from the pop versions, and Davis’ voice is no match for Dawson’s.
Continued sales prompted re-releases of both records in 1973, and both made it to the lower reaches of the charts, the Original Caste in Canada and Coven in the U.S. Meanwhile Dawson re-recorded the song with the actual Coven backing her. That version made it to No. 73 in 1974.
After that, people stopped recording the song, perhaps because Watergate made such sentiments seem hopelessly naive.