Draft Dodger Rag

"Draft Dodger Rag" is a satirical anti-war song by Phil Ochs, a U.S. protest singer from the 1960s known for being a harsh critic of the American military industrial complex. Originally released on his 1965 album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, "Draft Dodger Rag" quickly became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Contents

• The Smothers Brothers
• Cover versions
• References

Ochs wrote "Draft Dodger Rag" as American involvement in the Vietnam War was beginning to grow. The song is sung from the perspective of a gung-ho young man who has been drafted. When he reports for duty, however, the young man recites a list of reasons why he can't serve, including poor vision, flat feet, a ruptured spleen, allergies and asthma, back pain, addiction to multiple drugs, his college enrollment, his disabled aunt, and the fact that he carries a purse. (One historian of the draft resistance movement wrote that Ochs "described nearly every available escape from conscription".) As the song ends, the young man tells the sergeant that he'll be the first to volunteer for "a war without blood or gore".

"Draft Dodger Rag" was the first prominent satirical song about the draft during the Vietnam War. One writer says its humor can be appreciated on its own level, without respect to the political message of the song. Another says it added "much-needed humour" to the protest song genre.

Ochs wrote of the song:

In Vietnam, a 19-year-old Vietcong soldier screams that Americans should leave his country as he is shot by a government firing squad. His American counterpart meanwhile is staying up nights thinking up ways to deceptively destroy his health, mind, or virility to escape two years in a relatively comfortable army. Free enterprise strikes again.

Ochs performed "Draft Dodger Rag" in 1965 on a CBS Evening News television special Avoiding the Draft, one of the rare instances in which he appeared on a national American television broadcast.