Monthly Archives: March 2016

Today in history, Vietnam

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

Leave a comment

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

March 16, 1968

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

Charlie Company

Charlie Company had departed  for Vietnam on December 1, 1967. The company was comprised of five platoons. Captain Ernest Medina had earned the nickname “Mad Dog” from his high expectations and his quick temper.

William L. Calley, Lieutenant of Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon, struggled with basic leadership and was often ridiculed and belittled by Medina, who called Calley “Sweetheart.”

 On January 30, 1968 the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops had launched the Tet Offensive attacking a hundred cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. Charlie Company was not involved.

Charlie Company continued to have limited contact with the enemy, but while on routine patrols men are injured or killed by landmines. Frustration developed.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

Booby trap

On March 14, while on a patrol, a booby trap killed Sergeant George Cox. Two other GI’s were seriously injured. In one of the first documented instances of outright aggression, angry members of Charlie Company lashed out – while passing through a village troops shoot and killed a woman civilian working in a field.

On March 15, Captain Medina and the other commanders were briefed about increased intelligence that pointed to a small group of villages called My Lai as the haven for a Viet Cong battalion. This intelligence will later prove faulty.

The men were encouraged to be aggressive, that anyone they encounter will likely be the enemy as the residents of My Lai will be away at market.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

March 16, 1968

A partial account

The attack began. Troops did encounter some enemy. At…

7:50 AM

The two lead platoons moved through the village and shot fleeing Vietnamese or bayonet others. They throw hand grenades into houses and bunkers and destroy livestock and crops.

7:50 – 8:30 AM

The two platoons in the village rounded up approximately 20-50 civilians (mostly women, children and old men,) pushed them along trails to a dirt road south of the village, and placed them under guard. Another group of 70 civilians were moved to the east of the village.

Without pretext, soldiers begin bayoneting  or shooting the civilians. One GI pushed a man down a well and threw a grenade in after him. Over a dozen women and children praying by a temple were shot in the head.

8:15 AM

Two soldiers come across a woman carrying an infant and walking with a toddler; they fire at her. An elderly woman is spotted running down a path with an unexploded M79 grenade lodged in her stomach. One soldier forces a woman around the age of 20 to perform oral sex on him while holding a gun to a four-year-old child’s head.

Massacre continues…

9:00 AM

Lieutenant Calley reached the drainage ditch into which the civilians had been herded and gave the order to start killing them. Within ten minutes, all were shot down by members of the 1st Platoon. Witnesses to the shooting reported anywhere between 75 and 150 Vietnamese were killed. None of the Vietnamese were armed.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

 Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot and part of the operation. Early on, he had radioed for medical help when he saw wounded civilians. When he flew over the same group later he realized that they were dead. At  9:40 AM the crew of Thompson’s observation helicopter watched as a small group of soldiers approached a young woman lying wounded on the ground. Thompson had previously marked this woman with smoke. A captain walked up to the woman, prodded her with his foot and shot her in the head. (This captain was later identified as Medina.) 

Two days later Thompson was called in to report and he described what he saw as the unnecessary killing of civilians. After the meeting, Thompson was described as being furious at command’s lack of concern.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

My Lai Massacre

In an official report regarding the My Lai operation, a Lieutenant Colonel Barker concluded that the assault was successful: “This operation was well planned, well executed, and successful. Friendly casualties were light and the enemy suffered heavily. The infantry unit on the ground and helicopters were able to assist civilians in leaving the area in caring for and/or evacuating the wounded.”

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

April-May 1968

The army sent Thompson out in increasingly dangerous situations. Thompson was shot down five times, the last occurred during a mission from Da Nang to an airbase at Chu Lai, which broke his back.

During this time, G.I. Ron Ridenhour began to hear stories from members of Charlie Company and was curious. By November 1968 Ridenhour was no longer in the Army and had returned home to Phoenix.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

A year later…April 1969

Ron Ridenhour’s information and requests for an official investigation finally yielded results and on April 23, 1969 the Office of the Inspector General began a full inquiry.

On September 10, NBC Correspondent Robert Goralski reported that Lieutenant Calley “has been accused of premeditated murder of a number of South Vietnamese civilians. The murders are alleged to have been committed a year ago and the investigation is continuing.”

Vietnam My Lai MassacreNovember 17, 1969. The New York Times ran a story that quoted survivors of the My Lai massacre, who claimed over 567 Vietnamese men, women, and children were killed by American soldiers.

December 5, 1969: photos of the massacre are published. On the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite issues a warning about the disturbing images for viewers before showing them. The horrific images immediately cause a country-wide uproar.

March 29, 1971: Calley (and only Calley) was found guilty of premeditated murder of 22 civilians and sentenced to life in prison. The sentence was controversial and generated public outcry. Draft board members resign, veterans turned in their medals, and the “Free Calley” movement was born. Georgian governor Jimmy Carter asked his constituency to drive for a week with their lights on in protest, and flags were flown at half-mast in the state of Indiana.

Vietnam My Lai Massacre

 Fall 1971 & following

Fall 1971: Captain Medina was acquitted of all charges and Lieutenant Calley’s life sentence was reduced to 20 years.

March 6, 1998: Warrant Officer Thompson was recognized for his courage and honesty with the Soldier’s Medal. Thompson died on January 6, 2006.

August 20, 2009: for the first time Lieutenant Calley spoke publicly about My Lai. In front of the Kiwanis Club of Columbus, OH, he said, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

 Dates are from PBS for the American Experience.
[>>>American Experience timeline]

Vietnam My Lai Massacre
Birthdays, Grateful Dead, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh

4 Comments

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh

March 15, 1940 – October 25, 2024
Grateful Dead
Woodstock alum
…and much much more
The music never stopped
The Grateful Dead-Summer Solstice-Shoreline Amphitheatre 06/21/1989
Dead Bassist Phil Lesh
photo from: http://www.philzone.com/leshlinks/phil-lesh-bio.html

We could simply say that Phil Lesh was the one and only bassist for the Grateful Dead and leave it at that. Is there more that you need to know?

He was born in Berkeley, California and his first instrument was the violin. In high school he switched to the trumpet.  He eventually met Jerry Garcia and they became friends. Five years later, Jerry asked Phil to join the Warlocks and play bass.

Since no one had instructed him on  how to play the bass, he developed his own style based on his musical preferences such as classical music and jazz.

His contributions to the band were limited vocally and he composed few songs, but his musicianship was always an integral part of any Dead show.

Because of technical issues, the Dead’s contribution to the lore of  the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was more symbolic than actual. They felt their performance was sub-par and so that has become the description. Having said that, the show was not terrible in any sense. The Dead simply didn’t have the chance to fly that night.

Phil Lesh discussed his early influences and more in the following video.

In 1994, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.

 In 1995, after Jerry Garcia died, the Grateful Dead stopped as a band, but each of the members continued to play music. Sometimes together, sometimes as solo artists.

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh non-stop

Phil Lesh played with The Other Ones and The Dead, as well as his own band collection, Phil Lesh and Friends. In 1999, he co-headlined a tour with Bob Dylan.  Check the link below to see all of his credits since 1995.

In the spring of 1997, Phil and friends launched the Unbroken Chain Foundation, “a nonprofit organization which seeks to perpetuate the long-standing tradition of community service that has been the hallmark of the remarkable three-decade relationship between the Grateful Dead and its audience.”

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh
photo from the Terrapin Crossroads site

In 2012, Lesh founded a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads, in San Rafael, California. The venue officially opened on March 17, of that year.

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh

Lifer

To say Phil was a lifer is an understatement.  He continued to play regularly until his death in 2024.

Obit

The opening of NPR’s obituary began: “Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of countercultural rock band The Grateful Dead, has died. He was 84 years old. “

It continued: ““On a day-to-day basis, the psychic pivot to the Dead is Phil Lesh, the most aggressive purist, the anti-philistine Artist,” wrote Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally in his 2002 book A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.“It is he who most often and most loudly demands that they dance as closely as possible to the edge of the nearest available precipice. Intellectual, kinetic, intense, he was once nicknamed Reddy Kilowatt in recognition of his high mental and physical velocity.”

Dead Bassist Phil Lesh

Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone

Leave a comment

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone

Happy birthday

March 15, 1943

DJ
Band leader
Woodstock alum
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee

Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart was born on March 15, 1943, in Denton, Texas, and raised primarily in Vallejo, California. He sang with his family’s gospel group. As a teenager he sang doo wop.

Around 1964, he started as a disc jockey at R & B radio station KSOL. He became known for mixing white artists into the station’s soul music format.

At the same time, Stone began producing for the San Francisco-based label, Autumn Records. One of the hits Stone produced was Bobby Freeman‘s “C’on an Swim.”

 Of course it was the formation of his own band 1966, Sly & the Stoners which later merged with his brother Freddie’s band to become Sly and the Family Stone. The band consisted of  bassist Larry Graham, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, saxophonist Jerry Martini, and drummer Greg Errico,

In October 1967, they released  their first album, “A Whole New Thing.”

It was their resoundingly successful performance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair as well as that performance’s inclusion in the following year’s movie and album that brought stardom. Here’s the lesser known song “Love City”  from that amazing performance.

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone

Sly Stone

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone

That success also brought the availability of a lifestyle that offered as many dangers as it did comforts and Sly Stone in particular indulged in the former.

Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

He became homeless for awhile, but in 2015 a Los Angeles Supreme Court jury awarded him $5 million after  it found that Gerald “Jerry” Goldstein and Glenn Stone, his former manager and an entertainment lawyer, had cheated Stone out of over a decade’s worth of royalties.

But in 2016, the appellate court said the trial judge erred when it did not treat the assignment of royalties from Stone — legally Sylvester Stewart — to his deceased former manager Ken Roberts as a proven.

In July 2016, a California appeals court granted Stone’s former manager a new trial. (Law360 article)

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone

Films

On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone

On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone is a documentary about Sly Stone, his absence from the music scene, and one man’s quest to find out what happened to the artist. It is directed by Michael Rubenstone. [Wikipedia]

Dance to the Streaming Music

From a 2018 Deadline Hollywood dot com article: A feature documentary about Sly and The Family Stone and their impact on the development of funk, soul, rock, and psychedelic music is on its way. Dance to the Streaming Music, from Winter State Entertainment, will include exclusive interviews and footage of Sly and the Family Stone and other artists – and their reversal of fortune in the wake the Music Modernization Act.

While the project hoped for a 2019 release, it hasn’t happened as of 2023.

Questlove

And in February 2021 a Rolling Stone magazine article stated that, “Questlove will direct a new documentary about the career and legacy of Sly Stone.

Per a release, the as-yet-untitled project will follow “the story of the influential artist, king of funk, and fashion icon Sly Stone, a musician who was breaking all the rules at a time when doing so was extremely challenging, even dangerous. The pressure of explosive mainstream pop success and the responsibility of representing Black America forced him to walk the fine line of impossible expectations.”

In a statement, Questlove said: “It goes beyond saying that Sly’s creative legacy is in my DNA… it’s a black musician’s blueprint… to be given the honor to explore his history and legacy is beyond a dream for me.” [2023 DEADLINE article]

 

2023

Before the movie, came his autobiography: ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’

Slate magazine’s review said of it, “Sly Stone, now 80 years old, has just published a memoir…. The first thing that must be said about Thank You is that it is a miracle that it exists at all. For decades Sly has been one of music’s greatest ghost stories, a man who had descended into a nightmarish spiral of drug abuse and effectively withdrawn from public life. From the 1980s on, pretty much every time that Sly was in the news, it was for something terrible: arrests for cocaine and gun possession, harrowing motorcycle accidents, and money troubles that reportedly left him homeless. There were a series of failed comeback attempts before he stopped even really attempting; public appearances were vanishingly rare, and tended to range from discombobulated to deeply disturbing.”

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpdlfVVLPQ4

Sylvester Stewart Sly Stone