THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS
“The Battle of New Orleans” is a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. The song describes the 1815 Battle of New Orleans from the perspective of an American soldier; the song tells the tale of the battle with a light tone and provides a rather comical version of what actually happened at the battle. It has been recorded by many artists, but the singer most often associated with this song is Johnny Horton. His version scored number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. Billboard ranked it as the No. 1 song for 1959. In Billboard magazine’s rankings of the top songs in the first fifty years of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, “The Battle of New Orleans” was ranked as the twenty-eighth song overall and the number-one country music song to appear on the chart. (More from Wikipedia)
Country music and rockabilly artist Johnny Horton had a good streak of his own going with several “historical ballads”, beginning with “The Battle of New Orleans” in 1959; the song won the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. Horton continued the following year with two more hits, “Sink the Bismarck” and “North to Alaska” (the latter being the theme song for the John Wayne movie called North to Alaska). There is no telling how much further Horton might have been able to take this craze had it not been for his tragic death in November 1960.
(March 2013)
