Phillips, Joseph* - In Flanders Fields The Poppies Grow // Good-Bye

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Joseph Phillips - In Flanders Fields the Poppies Grow	02:58

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Lewis James - Good-Bye

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Information/Write-up

Originally released in 1919 as Okeh lateral cut on black label.

It was just a small flower of the field, but the poppy’s shared history with war had extended back to ancient times. In its in white version, it had grown along the banks of the mythic river to Hades, from which the dead would drink to forget the life they would leave behind. Helen of Troy was said to have blended its opium derivative into a wine that would ease the grief of the Trojan Wars. And, of course, it sat at the center of the Opium Wars of the early 19th century.

Its red version had quickly grown in blankets above the graves of those lost in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and was seen to be, either poetically or in reality, the expression of their blood. One hundred years later, and one hundred kilometers to the west, Brigade Surgeon of the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery Col. John McCrae sat in the open door of an ambulance, looking over the red poppies of a field of the Second Battle of Ypres. He had been writing poetry all of his life, but the poem he wrote at that moment became, in many estimations, one of the most famous ever written, and perhaps the most significant poem of World War I.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae - 1872-1918

Museum of Canadian Music Musée de la Musique Canadienne Calgary Vinyl Music Museum Canada Museum of Recorded Sound Canada Music Museum Calgary Music Museum

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