Navy vet, Woodstock performer Joe McDonald dies

“Country” Joe McDonald, best known as the singer who led Woodstock in the “Fish” cheer (albeit spelled a bit differently) died Saturday at the age of 84.

McDonald, oddly enough, was a Navy vet – joined when he was 17 and spent three years in. Presumably, based on his birth year of 1942, he was in from ’59-’62.  Now, I may be wrong, but back in those days you  essentially had a choice of two years’ drafted service (99% of the time in the Army), or you could volunteer for a minimum of three years for whatever service you wanted. So at least on the surface, that would make him a volunteer. Who knew?

In high school, McDonald was student conductor and president of the marching band. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent three years stationed in Japan. After his enlistment, he attended California State Los Angeles for a year, during which he started printing a small magazine called Et Tu.

McDonald became involved with the Free Speech Movement and the wave of demonstrations against the Vietnam War at UC Berkeley. Soon he met ED Denson, John Fahey’s co-founder of Takoma Records. Together they launched Rag Baby, a magazine focused on the San Francisco folk music scene.^[19] McDonald proposed doing “talking issues” of the magazine – audio supplements – which led him and Barry “The Fish” Melton to co-found Country Joe and the Fish. The band’s first songs “I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixing-To-Die-Rag”, “Superbird”, “Bassstrings”, “Thing Called Love” and “Section 43” were self-released through these “talking issues” of Rag Baby.

Denson began managing the band. Country Joe and the Fish played their first show under that name on November 5, 1965, joining The Fugs and Allen Ginsberg in a chemistry lab at UC Berkeley.

Names from ‘way back… the Fugs? (Maybe hippydom’s first X-rated band before X-ratings existed?)

Overall, McDonald recorded 33 albums, did tributes to Woody Guthry and Pete Seeger, and was active in many Vietnam Veterans’ aid groups, as well as Save the Whales.

McDonald’s long-standing commitment to Vietnam veterans and the peace movement is evident throughout his career. He successfully led the effort to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Berkeley, California and was involved in establishing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in San Francisco.  Wiki

Think you had to have lived through the time to know who he was – between that and the average politics on this site, I suspect he will mainly be remembered (if at all) as a musical footnote. It’s funny, though, to see some of the folks who did serve when they were younger – and in cases like this, HOW they served.

Category: We Remember