![]() ![]() Many schools and businesses made rules about the acceptable length of men’s and boys’ hair. Some people got aggressively angry, threatened or attacked men with long hair. The popular 1968 Broadway musical, Hair, dramatized the importance of long hair as a symbol of anti-conformist feelings of the youth of the 1960s. Many people, especially older people, saw the increasing length of men’s hair as a challenge to the conservative values of patriotism, religion, and masculinity. These included the fear of nuclear annihilation, the dangers of air pollution, the need for Civil Rights and for African-Americans to be able to vote, feminism and the “Gay Rights Movement.” A slogan at the time was “Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out.” For many youth the “rat-race” offered no comfort in the face of ethical issues their world was up against. Getting hair cut short represented conforming to what one’s employer wanted their employees to look like on the job. They also wore long hair to set themselves apart from mainstream consumer society. Hippies often wore their hair down to their shoulders and longer as a sign of protest against America’s escalating involvement in the Vietnam War. This spawned films like 1959’s The Beat Generation which examined “the weird, way-out world of the Beatniks!” Starting in the mid-50’s with the Beatniks and then the Hippies, long hair on men represented a rebellion against the clean-cut image that had prevailed during previous decades. ![]() However, the song argues that the way forward is to just try to understand this nonconforming student. The school board, PTA and the mothers want to solve the problem of this boys nonconformity by punishing him. In addition, this boy is someone who is the only one whose saying something in this whole town. Not only does this boy dare to be different, he also is thoughtful and an independent thinker. In the mid-60’s it was a concern that if boys wore their hair longer people wouldn’t be able to tell the boys apart from the girls. ![]() If this boy is allowed to wear long hair, other boys may also start to wear their hair long. The PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) “and all of the mothers” join in with the conventional view that this boy needs to be singled out and made an example of. As a result the school board has made a ruling that the boy isn’t allowed to return to school unless he cuts his hair. The subject of the song concerns a boy who wears long hair and clothes that don’t conform to the typical clothes boys (or young men) wore to school. With its concern for tolerance, “Home Of The Brave” urged listeners to make more space for people who were outside the norms of society. South of the border the song charted well in these radio markets: Grand Rapids, Michigan (#1), Syracuse, New York (#2), Pensacola, Florida (#3), Bute, Montana (#4) and Santa Rosa, California (#7). However, the refrain, “home of the brave, land of the free, why won’t you let him be what he wants to be,” was cheered by radio audiences in Vancouver, taking the tune to #4 on the local charts. It was a hippie protest anthem: “the school board says he can’t come to school no more, unless he wears his hair like he wore it before…” The lyrics didn’t sit well with some Americans in a country busy drafting soldiers for the Vietnam War. It became a top ten hit in Canada, but only peaked at #25 in the USA. Overlapping with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in America, Jody Miller released “Home of the Brave”. That year she covered Dusty Springfield‘s “Silver Threads And Golden Needles”. Her tune, “ Queen of the House“, set a pattern of releasing either answer songs or covers of other original recordings. This time it was in response to Roger Miller’s “ King of the Road“. In 1965 Jody Miller released another answer song. Her single climbed to #1 in San Bernadino and #4 in San Diego. In early 1964 Jody Miller released a song titled “He Walks Like A Man,” that was an answer song/commentary on the Four Seasons Top Ten hit, “Walk Like A Man” from early 1963. She moved to Los Angeles and was discovered by western movie actor and fellow Oklahoman, Dale Robertson, while she was performing at the Troubador nightclub. Miller got her start singing in folk clubs in Oklahoma. In 1949, she heard Mario Lanza sing “La donna è mobile.” Jody Miller recalls once she heard Lanza’s song, she determined she would be a singer. A year later Jody was sent to Blanchard, Oklahoma, where she learned to play the piano while living with her fiddle-playing grandmother. By the age of seven her parents were entering her in amateur contests around Oakland. Around the age of six, her older sister, Pat, would play the guitar and encourage Jody to sing. The youngest of five girls, Miller’s family spent some of her early years in Oakland, California. Myrna Joy Miller was born in Phoenix in 1941. ![]()
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