Remembering 9/11

Today we bring you two songs about 9/11 by Oklahomans -Watermelon Slim’s “Red, White & Blues” and Tom Paxton’s “The Bravest”.

DOWNLOAD: Watermelon Slim - “Red, White & Blues”

DOWNLOAD: Tom Paxton - “The Bravest”

Read the stories behind the songs after the jump.

Watermelon Slim on “Red, White & Blues”, which appears on his 2003 album, Big Shoes to Fill:

“The Red, White and Blues” was written two days after the attack, and Fried Okra Jones first performed it the second week after that at the Stillwater Bikes ‘n Blues Festival. Lotta Vietnam vets in that crowd, of course, and it went over very big with them, given the atmosphere of the time. Naturally, much has changed since then. Our president has launched us into exactly the wrong war at the wrong time. He seems to have completely forgotten that it was al-Qaida that struck us in the World Trade Center twice, the Pentagon, the U.S.S. Cole, and plenty of other provocations. I am going to have to write some sort of sequel that stands up well to Willie Nelson’s “Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?” I always make sure to say, either before or after, “God Bless the United States of America.” That seems to make almost anything politically difficult go down easier. I’m not being cynical about it; I love my country, I volunteered for Vietnam service. But I will never tolerate liars and greedheads, and that’s what’s in the White House now.

Tom Paxton on “The Bravest”, which appears on his 2002 album,Looking for the Moon:

As I sat and watched the horror unfold on 9/11, I could smell the acrid smoke drifting south from the Pentagon. There was a never ending line of cars heading away from Washington. With the rest of the world I watched the towers come down and among the victims were 343 New York firemen. I’ll never be able to look at a fireman or woman again without knowing that he or she would lay down their lives for me without ever knowing my name. We can never thank them enough.