I don’t know that I had heard this song before but this has a classic singer-songwriter folk-protest feel to the lyric and melody. Good stuff, and you made it your own, Bill.
it was a country hit in 1966. i did a doo wop version with my band the velvetones iin 1971. thought i try a folk version version with classic rock changes. I think it was the first protest song outside of the folk idiom to make the charts the second was last train to clarksville by the monkees, although theirs wasnt as explicit Actually, in 1959, the B side to Conway Twitty’s Lonely Blue Boy. Star Spangled Heaven, might have been the first vietnam-era radio hit, although it took (like ballad of the green beret) a patriotic rather protest stand.