The Hit
I first heard “One Tin Soldier” on the 1987 Freedom Rock compilation…which, if I’m being honest introduced me a slew of acts from the late-60s/early-70s acts that didn’t stay in the headlines after the decade ended. Like any kid who found something that excited him, I played Freedom Rock into the goddamn ground (or parts of it; stretched that tape to the breaking point), but “One Tin Soldier” always came across as hokey, hippie-dippie, etc. - e.g., if you listen and hear what the greedy, murderous Valley People find under the stone, the naivete passes like a kidney stone. That carried into the music - the delicate flute it opens with, the soaring, uplifting horns - it sounded like folk after the marketing department got its hands on it. Researching this has only made this funnier…
At any rate, the original song came from the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter (also responsible for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, “Don’t Pull Your Love,” the Four Tops, “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got),” and the Grass Roots’ “Two Divided by Love”) as an anti-war ballad during the Vietnam War. The original was recorded in 1969 and performed by a Canadian act named Original Caste, with Dixie Lee Stone on vocals. The song played well in Canada an all right in the U.S. (#34). You don’t have to look hard to find Original Caste’s original, which…does not sound like the version I heard on Freedom Rock (above comes close, but I don't think it's entirely right). The tune is there, along with the strident critique of greed and organized religion (cousins!), but the production lacks the polish and richness of the other version.
The makers of a movie called The Legend of Billy Jackrevived the song for its soundtrack in 1971, only with the credit going to a band called Coven. That movie tells the story of a half-Native American Green Beret (presumably returned from Vietnam) who fought (semi-) reluctantly fought injustice in an Arizona town relying on martial arts. The rest of this post tells the story of Coven.
The Rest of the Story
“Also included inside the album was Coven's infamous Black Mass poster, showing members of the group displaying the sign of the horns as they prepared for a Satanic ritual over a nude Dawson lying on an altar.”
The album in question was 1969’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, Coven’s debut album. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe on reliable advice that the image above was the special insert to the album. The woman laying on the table is Esther “Jinx” Dawson, lead singer of Coven and the vocalist on “the Billy Jack version” of “One Tin Soldier.” To answer the first question I had, yes, Dawson and Coven as a whole absolutely took and takes the Satanic, Left-Hand-Path stuff seriously.
Dawson grew up in Indiana and, as she freely admits, came from old money, the kind that traces all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. She called a mansion home, had time and space to study and perform opera from an early age…but, she also had access to the occult by way of a “forbidden” top shelf in her father’s expansive library, subjects she covers toward the middle of a 2019 video interview with Ghost Cult Magazine (fun, btw). Naturally, she checked out that shelf the first chance she got. According to a nicely-respectful NPR retrospective on her and Coven’s short, original history, that’s where she learned that, “Multiple generations of her relatives had been followers of the occult traditions of the Left Hand Path and involved with various secret societies.”
On getting into the world, Dawson bounced between a number of acts (including a jazz act, apparently), Dawson connected with a bassist named Greg “Oz” Osborne in the mid-1960s to form Him, Her and Them. Somewhere in the middle-late 60s, they’d met a drummer named Steve Ross and, after calling in Chris Neilsen (guitar) and Rick Durrett (keyboards; later replaced by John Hobbs), they formed Coven in Chicago, Illinois.
The name speaks to the occult and their stagecraft dove right into it. As she off-handedly explains in a 2017 interview with Decibel Magazine, “When we did shows (in the past) people didn’t understand the sign of the horns or the reason for the coffin or the upside down cross. Now that people understand these things I think it will be thrilling.” The NPR piece fills in some blanks with this:
“Coven made an impression with its dark grooves and stage elements including a Black Mass and a roadie hanging on a cross that was inverted by the end of the set.” [Ed. - that is, imagine a roadie hanging from the upside cross in the first quote.]
Something else Coven brought to their stage shows: the “Sign of the horns.” Yes, Coven introduced “the devil sign” to heavy metal and/or pop culture - and, if you watch that Ghost Cult Magazine interview, Dawson explains how to do them properly (mind the thumb, people). They played that show (off and on, I’m guessing) from 1967-1969, opening for musical acts as divergent as Alice Cooper (makes sense), MC5 (still in the wheelhouse), Vanilla Fudge (slipping away), and The Yardbirds (umm). Seriously, imagine the opening act for your favorite dropping a Black Mass into the middle of their set; it’s fucking mind-blowing (and, as such, probably didn’t happen all that often).
Related to all that, the NPR piece recounts a moment when MTV VJ Martha Quinn once ambushed Black Sabbath’s Tommy Iommi by pulling out Coven’s debut album during an interview. When she asked whether he’d heard of them, he feigned ignorance, but…:
“The distinction of being ‘the first’ band to fuse occult and Satanic themes with rock music belongs to Coven. And while it's possible that Iommi wasn't aware of Coven during Sabbath's earliest days, it certainly wasn't the first time he'd heard its name; the two bands reportedly played a show together in 1970 and at the time had affiliated record labels — Vertigo/Fontana and Mercury, respectively.”
As the legendary Lester Bangs once put it, Black Sabbath was England’s answer to Coven. Literally, no one else was playing shows anything like that and diving that hard into very-overt Satanism until they came along - moreover, and unlike most bands that followed them, the occult was neither a stage-prop nor a flirtation for them: it was a path they chose, believed in and took seriously...
…which really bit them on the ass when a photo of Charles Manson holding up their album in front of a record store circulated widely and an Esquire magazine feature titled “Evil Lurks in California” made the rounds. Once the corporate world and regular people started to (unjustly) associate Coven with the Tate/LaBianca murders, the album got pulled from circulation. Dawson talks about how they sold it for a while in brown paper bags (hey…like porn!), but even that dried up before too long. A band killed vicariously by its own brand...
That was in 1970. “One Tin Soldier” happened after that and, from what I gather, Dawson insisted that Coven, as a band, got named in the credits for that single - even though she recorded in with session musicians. Coven recorded a couple, less overtly Satanic albums after that - e.g,, Coven in 1971 and 1974’s Blood on the Snow (which produced this Disney-produced video), but they folded by the end of 1974.
I don’t know what happened to the rest of the band, but Dawson kept going after that. Last I heard, Jinx Dawson performed in front of a new line-up of Coven for 2017’s Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands. She never stopped and, for what it’s worth, I really like this quote (from the Decibel interview):
“I did have a punk band in the 80s. I also went on tour with The Doobie Brothers and The Beach Boys. Nobody really knew who I was, which was interesting. I was always upset because I couldn’t do Coven again. But I always kept busy in some form. So I’d say I was hiding in plain sight.”
About the Sampler
At time of writing, “Witchcraft” (aka, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls) is the only Coven album to which Spotify has the rights, so that’s my source material. I won’t pretend I like it. It sounds like the soundtrack for a “Satanic panic” PSA-movie from the early 70s as much as anything else, the 13+ minute “Satanic Mass,” in particular (a tone that “The Making of Witchcraft” utterly fails correct). The quality of the rest gets swallowed up in a kind of theatricality that translates horribly to a post-modern era - even a “normal song” like “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” comes across like a throw-away by The Doors (also, is that the first time someone played on that acronym?). More than anything else, it’s just…not what most people want to sit through - e.g., you get more Satanic ritual material interpolation in “Coven in Charing Cross” and, if you’re there for it, good on you. And good on them.
Long story short, it’s not material for the casual listener - specific to such an overwhelming extent that not even “Wicked Woman” or (best traditional song of the bunch) “White Witch of Rosehall” can hold up. (There's a fun Johnny Cash side-story to all this, one that includes a song of his own.)
That said, and again, Coven were true and absolute originals. Even if 90% of their sound became dated within five years (on the outside), the themes and concepts they brought to the table opened up the creative space for one of the biggest genres in late-20th century popular music. I’m not sure what you call it, but it’s the polar fucking opposite of “one hit wonder.”
If you ask me, the real question is how the hell you fit “One Tin Soldier” into all this…
I first heard “One Tin Soldier” on the 1987 Freedom Rock compilation…which, if I’m being honest introduced me a slew of acts from the late-60s/early-70s acts that didn’t stay in the headlines after the decade ended. Like any kid who found something that excited him, I played Freedom Rock into the goddamn ground (or parts of it; stretched that tape to the breaking point), but “One Tin Soldier” always came across as hokey, hippie-dippie, etc. - e.g., if you listen and hear what the greedy, murderous Valley People find under the stone, the naivete passes like a kidney stone. That carried into the music - the delicate flute it opens with, the soaring, uplifting horns - it sounded like folk after the marketing department got its hands on it. Researching this has only made this funnier…
At any rate, the original song came from the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter (also responsible for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, “Don’t Pull Your Love,” the Four Tops, “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got),” and the Grass Roots’ “Two Divided by Love”) as an anti-war ballad during the Vietnam War. The original was recorded in 1969 and performed by a Canadian act named Original Caste, with Dixie Lee Stone on vocals. The song played well in Canada an all right in the U.S. (#34). You don’t have to look hard to find Original Caste’s original, which…does not sound like the version I heard on Freedom Rock (above comes close, but I don't think it's entirely right). The tune is there, along with the strident critique of greed and organized religion (cousins!), but the production lacks the polish and richness of the other version.
The makers of a movie called The Legend of Billy Jackrevived the song for its soundtrack in 1971, only with the credit going to a band called Coven. That movie tells the story of a half-Native American Green Beret (presumably returned from Vietnam) who fought (semi-) reluctantly fought injustice in an Arizona town relying on martial arts. The rest of this post tells the story of Coven.
The Rest of the Story
“Also included inside the album was Coven's infamous Black Mass poster, showing members of the group displaying the sign of the horns as they prepared for a Satanic ritual over a nude Dawson lying on an altar.”
The album in question was 1969’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, Coven’s debut album. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe on reliable advice that the image above was the special insert to the album. The woman laying on the table is Esther “Jinx” Dawson, lead singer of Coven and the vocalist on “the Billy Jack version” of “One Tin Soldier.” To answer the first question I had, yes, Dawson and Coven as a whole absolutely took and takes the Satanic, Left-Hand-Path stuff seriously.
Dawson grew up in Indiana and, as she freely admits, came from old money, the kind that traces all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. She called a mansion home, had time and space to study and perform opera from an early age…but, she also had access to the occult by way of a “forbidden” top shelf in her father’s expansive library, subjects she covers toward the middle of a 2019 video interview with Ghost Cult Magazine (fun, btw). Naturally, she checked out that shelf the first chance she got. According to a nicely-respectful NPR retrospective on her and Coven’s short, original history, that’s where she learned that, “Multiple generations of her relatives had been followers of the occult traditions of the Left Hand Path and involved with various secret societies.”
On getting into the world, Dawson bounced between a number of acts (including a jazz act, apparently), Dawson connected with a bassist named Greg “Oz” Osborne in the mid-1960s to form Him, Her and Them. Somewhere in the middle-late 60s, they’d met a drummer named Steve Ross and, after calling in Chris Neilsen (guitar) and Rick Durrett (keyboards; later replaced by John Hobbs), they formed Coven in Chicago, Illinois.
The name speaks to the occult and their stagecraft dove right into it. As she off-handedly explains in a 2017 interview with Decibel Magazine, “When we did shows (in the past) people didn’t understand the sign of the horns or the reason for the coffin or the upside down cross. Now that people understand these things I think it will be thrilling.” The NPR piece fills in some blanks with this:
“Coven made an impression with its dark grooves and stage elements including a Black Mass and a roadie hanging on a cross that was inverted by the end of the set.” [Ed. - that is, imagine a roadie hanging from the upside cross in the first quote.]
Something else Coven brought to their stage shows: the “Sign of the horns.” Yes, Coven introduced “the devil sign” to heavy metal and/or pop culture - and, if you watch that Ghost Cult Magazine interview, Dawson explains how to do them properly (mind the thumb, people). They played that show (off and on, I’m guessing) from 1967-1969, opening for musical acts as divergent as Alice Cooper (makes sense), MC5 (still in the wheelhouse), Vanilla Fudge (slipping away), and The Yardbirds (umm). Seriously, imagine the opening act for your favorite dropping a Black Mass into the middle of their set; it’s fucking mind-blowing (and, as such, probably didn’t happen all that often).
Related to all that, the NPR piece recounts a moment when MTV VJ Martha Quinn once ambushed Black Sabbath’s Tommy Iommi by pulling out Coven’s debut album during an interview. When she asked whether he’d heard of them, he feigned ignorance, but…:
“The distinction of being ‘the first’ band to fuse occult and Satanic themes with rock music belongs to Coven. And while it's possible that Iommi wasn't aware of Coven during Sabbath's earliest days, it certainly wasn't the first time he'd heard its name; the two bands reportedly played a show together in 1970 and at the time had affiliated record labels — Vertigo/Fontana and Mercury, respectively.”
As the legendary Lester Bangs once put it, Black Sabbath was England’s answer to Coven. Literally, no one else was playing shows anything like that and diving that hard into very-overt Satanism until they came along - moreover, and unlike most bands that followed them, the occult was neither a stage-prop nor a flirtation for them: it was a path they chose, believed in and took seriously...
…which really bit them on the ass when a photo of Charles Manson holding up their album in front of a record store circulated widely and an Esquire magazine feature titled “Evil Lurks in California” made the rounds. Once the corporate world and regular people started to (unjustly) associate Coven with the Tate/LaBianca murders, the album got pulled from circulation. Dawson talks about how they sold it for a while in brown paper bags (hey…like porn!), but even that dried up before too long. A band killed vicariously by its own brand...
That was in 1970. “One Tin Soldier” happened after that and, from what I gather, Dawson insisted that Coven, as a band, got named in the credits for that single - even though she recorded in with session musicians. Coven recorded a couple, less overtly Satanic albums after that - e.g,, Coven in 1971 and 1974’s Blood on the Snow (which produced this Disney-produced video), but they folded by the end of 1974.
I don’t know what happened to the rest of the band, but Dawson kept going after that. Last I heard, Jinx Dawson performed in front of a new line-up of Coven for 2017’s Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands. She never stopped and, for what it’s worth, I really like this quote (from the Decibel interview):
“I did have a punk band in the 80s. I also went on tour with The Doobie Brothers and The Beach Boys. Nobody really knew who I was, which was interesting. I was always upset because I couldn’t do Coven again. But I always kept busy in some form. So I’d say I was hiding in plain sight.”
About the Sampler
At time of writing, “Witchcraft” (aka, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls) is the only Coven album to which Spotify has the rights, so that’s my source material. I won’t pretend I like it. It sounds like the soundtrack for a “Satanic panic” PSA-movie from the early 70s as much as anything else, the 13+ minute “Satanic Mass,” in particular (a tone that “The Making of Witchcraft” utterly fails correct). The quality of the rest gets swallowed up in a kind of theatricality that translates horribly to a post-modern era - even a “normal song” like “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” comes across like a throw-away by The Doors (also, is that the first time someone played on that acronym?). More than anything else, it’s just…not what most people want to sit through - e.g., you get more Satanic ritual material interpolation in “Coven in Charing Cross” and, if you’re there for it, good on you. And good on them.
Long story short, it’s not material for the casual listener - specific to such an overwhelming extent that not even “Wicked Woman” or (best traditional song of the bunch) “White Witch of Rosehall” can hold up. (There's a fun Johnny Cash side-story to all this, one that includes a song of his own.)
That said, and again, Coven were true and absolute originals. Even if 90% of their sound became dated within five years (on the outside), the themes and concepts they brought to the table opened up the creative space for one of the biggest genres in late-20th century popular music. I’m not sure what you call it, but it’s the polar fucking opposite of “one hit wonder.”
If you ask me, the real question is how the hell you fit “One Tin Soldier” into all this…
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