All the News That's Fit to Sing

Infobox Album |
Name = All The News That's Fit to Sing
Type = Album
Artist = Phil Ochs


Released = 1964
Recorded = 1964
Genre = Folk
Length = 42:46
Label = Elektra
Producer = Jac Holzman and Paul A. Rothchild
Reviews =
* Allmusic Rating|3|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:r1abqj5bojfa~T1 link]
Last album =
This album = "All The News That's Fit to Sing"
(1964)
Next album = "I Ain't Marching Anymore"
(1965)

"All The News That's Fit to Sing" was Phil Ochs' first album. Recorded in 1964 for Elektra Records, it was full of many elements that would come back throughout his career. It was the album that defined his "singing journalist" phase, strewn with songs whose roots were allegedly pulled from "Newsweek" magazine. It is one in a long line of folk albums used to tell stories about everyday struggles and hardships.

Among these stories was that of William Worthy, an American journalist who traveled to Cuba in spite of an embargo on the country who was forbidden to return to the United States. Civil rights figures Medgar Evers and Emmett Till were lionized in "Too Many Martyrs" (alternatively known as "The Ballad of Medgar Evers".) Two "talking blues" using the melody to the old folk song "John Hardy" jabbed sarcastic at Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells", was set to music. "The Thresher" was an ode to the sinking of the nuclear-powered American submarine, the USS "Thresher": "And she'll always run silent/And she'll always run deep." Also included was one of Ochs' widest known songs, "Power and the Glory".

Track listing

All songs by Phil Ochs unless otherwise noted.
# "One More Parade" (P. Ochs, B. Gibson) – 3:00
# "The Thresher" – 2:50
# "Talkin' Vietnam" – 3:38
# "Lou Marsh" – 4:04
# "Power and the Glory" – 2:15
# "Celia"– 3:08)
# "The Bells" (E. A. Poe, with musical adaptation by P. Ochs) – 3:00
# "Automation Song" – 2:08
# "Ballad of William Worthy" – 2:15
# "Knock on the Door" – 2:47
# "Talkin' Cuban Crisis" – 2:40
# "Bound for Glory" – 3:15
# "Too Many Martyrs" (Ochs, Gibson) – 2:46
# "What's That I Hear" – 2:00
# "Bullets of Mexico" – 2:34 - bonus track on CD

Participants

*Phil Ochs - first guitar, vocals
*Danny Kalb - second guitar
*John Sebastian - harmonica on "Bound For Glory" (uncredited)
*Paul A. Rothchild - recording director
*Jac Holzman - production supervisor