Singer Joe McDonald sings through the live performance marking the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock music pageant on Aug. 15, 2009 in Bethel, New York. McDonald has died at age 84.
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Mario Tama/Getty Pictures
Nation Joe McDonald, the singer-songwriter whose Vietnam Warfare protest music grew to become a signature anthem of the Nineteen Sixties counterculture, has died at 84.
McDonald died on Saturday in Berkeley, Calif., in keeping with an announcement launched by a publicist. His well being had lately declined attributable to Parkinson’s illness.
Born in 1942, in Washington, D.C., he grew up in El Monte, Calif., exterior Los Angeles, in keeping with a biography on his web site. As a younger man he served within the U.S. Navy earlier than turning to writing and music through the early Nineteen Sixties, ultimately changing into concerned within the political and cultural ferment of the Bay Space.
In 1965 he helped kind the band Nation Joe and the Fish in Berkeley. The group grew to become a part of the rising San Francisco psychedelic music scene, mixing folks traditions with electrical rock and pointed political commentary.
The band’s best-known music, “I-Really feel-Like-I am-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” captured the rising anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam period. With its ragtime-influenced rhythm and sharply satirical lyrics about warfare and political management, the music shortly grew to become related to protests towards the battle.
McDonald delivered the music to some half one million individuals on the 1969 Woodstock pageant in upstate New York. Performing solo, he led the group in a type of call-and-response earlier than launching into the anti-war anthem, turning the efficiency into one of many defining scenes of the pageant.
Nation Joe and the Fish launched a number of recordings through the late Nineteen Sixties and toured broadly, changing into intently recognized with that period’s West Coast rock and protest actions.
McDonald later continued performing and recording as a solo artist, recording quite a few albums throughout a profession that spanned greater than half a century. His work drew variously from folks, rock and blues traditions and sometimes mirrored his long-standing curiosity in political and social points.
Though he grew to become broadly identified for his opposition to the Vietnam Warfare, McDonald incessantly emphasised respect for individuals who served within the U.S. army. After his personal service within the Navy, he remained engaged with veterans’ points and sometimes carried out at occasions related to veterans and their experiences, in keeping with his web site biography.
