Martin Luther King, Jr., celebrated today, has been celebrated repeatedly in song. Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” a straightforward tribute released in 1981, was instrumental in helping to establish the national holiday commemorating King’s birth. U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love),” one of the band’s earliest and most enduring anthems, was written after Bono read Stephen B. Oates’s King biography “Let The Trumpet Sound.” And “Abraham, Martin, and John,” written by Dick Holler and originally recorded by Dion, looks at the string of assassinations that defined America in the sixties; it has since been covered by dozens of artists, including Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and even Leonard Nimoy. But there are other, lesser-known songs about King. Here are seven.
Public Enemy, “By the Time I Get to Arizona” (1991)
Stevie Wonder wondered how anyone could resist King’s message of peace. Yet, even after Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, various politicians objected, some (like Jesse Helmes) citing King’s leftist political views and others questioning his importance as a leader. Arizona Governor Even Mecham, was an especially staunch opponent. Enter Public Enemy: this controversial anthem had an even more controversial video that dramatized the governor’s assassination.
Paul Simon, “So Beautiful or So What” (2011)
The title song to Simon’s most recent album (reviewed in this magazine here), includes a verse about King’s assassination (“Four men on the balcony / Overlooking the parking lot / Pointing at a figure in the distance / Dr. King has just been shot”).
Otis Spann, “Blues For Martin Luther King” (1968)
Like Neil Young’s “Ohio,” this song by Spann—one of the premier Chicago blues pianists—is a ripped-from-the-headlines lament that relates the circumstances of King’s assassination.
Lambchop, “Sharing a Gibson With Martin Luther King, Jr.” (2008)
This enigmatic, subtle song comes from Lambchop’s enigmatic, subtle album “OH (Ohio).” Search its lyrics for clues to its subject, and whether or not it’s actually about King, peace, justice, urban despair, and spiritual beauty. (It is.)
Bobby Womack, “American Dream” (1984)
Co-written with Jim Ford, the original version of “American Dream” was released on Womack’s “The Poet II” and sampled King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This version, by Calvin Richardson, is from “Facts of Life: Soul of Bobby Womack,” an album-length tribute to Womack’s music released in 2006.
Kris Kristofferson, “They Killed Him” (1985)
Kristofferson’s song isn’t only about King: it’s also about Gandhi and Jesus. And it was covered the following year by Bob Dylan on his scattershot album “Knocked Out Loaded.”
Jerry Moore, “The Ballad of Birmingham” (1967)
This song was on the album “Life is a Constant Journey Home,” which was released the year before King was assassinated; it’s actually a response to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963. The lyrics come from a poem by Dudley Randall; Moore read them in a newspaper and asked permission to adapt them into a song.
