The Ballad of the Green Berets

Sixty years ago this month, the most popular record in America was The Ballad of the Green Berets, written and sung by Sgt. Barry Sadler. It was the #1 record on Billboard’s Hot 100 for an astounding five weeks, at a time when there was still a wave of patriotism over U.S. involvement in Vietnam – the idea that the war was an immoral quicksand pit sucking up American lives had yet to hit home.

Lyndon Johnson’s approval rating was 67 percent in early ’66; it would drop steadily from there, as would the 48 percent of American college students in favor of the war.

Sadler was a Green Beret medic wounded in Vietnam, so there was a whiff of authenticity about The Ballad of the Green Berets, which he wrote during his convalescence. Performing the song on The Ed Sullivan Show launch pad, the record took off, selling nine million copies and becoming the top-selling record of the year. Sadler also recorded what amounted to a concept album, Ballads of the Green Berets, that sold a million copies during the first five weeks of its release.

The record’s success was a reminder that while the Top 40 was mostly reflective of the musical tastes of teenagers, occasionally adults flexed their wallets and had some say. Some other examples: Everybody Loves Somebody and Hello Dolly in the middle of 1964’s Beatlemania, and later in 1966, Strangers in the Night. All #1 records.

Younger kids may have helped with The Ballad of the Green Berets as well, the eight and nine-year olds pretending to be Vic Morrow and Rick Jason in their backyards playing with toy guns.

The irony of The Ballad of the Green Berets at the top of the charts is that it created a logjam of songs in the top ten that, at least in their titles and universal themes, spoke more powerfully about the emotional churn of soldiers trapped overseas and their families: California Dreamin’, My World Is Empty Without You, Homeward Bound, Nowhere Man, Daydream.

The song didn’t sit well with on the British pop charts. Mick Jagger called it “terribly sick,” and various Beatles offered up words like “crap” and “propaganda.” Paul Jones, of Manfred Mann, said, “The main point is that the American State Department is clearly annoyed because they cannot get people to volunteer to fight in Vietnam.”

Emotionally manipulative and jingoistic, The Ballad of the Green Berets, coupled with the moronic Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., whose run as one of the top three network shows pretty much ran parallel to the war and was filmed with the cooperation of the Marines, were a low-key recruitment effort that missed the mark badly.

After The Ballad of the Green Berets, Sadler did some television acting, wrote a series of men’s adventure paperbacks, then was found guilty of manslaughter when he shot an unarmed man in an argument over a woman. He met up with more violence after moving to Guatemala and was shot in the head while sitting in a cab. Left with brain damage and quadriplegic, he died in 1989.

On Spotify, The Ballad of the Green Berets has more than 9.7 million total plays and songs by Sadler are played more than 53,000 times a month.