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The Will We Ever Overcome? song sample is the 14th track on our new album Greatest Hits, Vol. Two ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) that was released by the USA’s Studio City’s Unlimited Sounds LLC in conjunction with London’s Swiss Cottage Recordz on 17 April 2020 and features all original songs by ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) (please take a good look at the album’s cover artwork and hope it doesn’t make you feel dizzy)!
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You can download our album Greatest Hits, Vol. Two ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) on iTunes HERE on Spotify HERE on Amazon HERE on Deezer HERE
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You can watch the album’s song samples video promo HERE.
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Paul Robert Thomas talks about ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) new album HERE.
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Will We Ever Overcome Lyrics
Jane Fonda’s on Radio Hanoi
Disrespecting our patriotic boys
From Kent to Jackson State
The National Guard’s full of hate
Shooting students who disagree
Who have different views from you and me
Hear believers sing ‘We Shall Overcome’
But can the battle ever be won?
The new religion is the rule of the gun
Will we ever overcome?
Will we ever overcome?
Shame in Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery
King fighting Jim Crow in the debris
Segregation in the Land of the Free
When will this people ever be free?
When will they overcome?
When will they overcome?
White Presidents with their whores
All ignoring the cries of the black poor
All profiting from the spoils of war
The war machine always demanding more
There’s nothing new under the sun
Greed will never be overcome
American rock stars buying their thrills
Forgetting that uncontrolled pleasure kills
And Bobby the ‘Folk-Protest’ singer
Singing the praises of gangsters and killers
Like Billy, Joey and Jesse James
While forgetting his own people’s 6 million names
His American Dream’s been well done
At the end of the line will he overcome?
There’s a road that I’ve been told
Will lead you to that pot of gold
Called the American Freedom Road
But the sign says ‘Under Repair – Road Closed’
Will we ever overcome?
Will we ever overcome?
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Music composed and performed by Paul Odiase BMI No. 1252265 (Switzerland)
Song lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas PRS No. 497904008 (London)
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Notes on When Will We Overcome?
‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) are children of the 60’s and were teenager’s during this crazy decade. Although ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) don’t do covers, what we do, as in the case of our song ‘When Will We Overcome’, is to take a contemporary retrospective look back at what has passed, because so many times things seem to happen so quick that we miss their gravity or their significance, for although we know in our hearts that something just ain’t right, life is moving so fast around us that we don’t have the time to stop time and deal with those things and they just pass on by.
The song ‘We Shall Overcome’ was adopted by the ‘Protest Movement’ of the late 50’s and early 60’s, the modern version was a song sung during the Tobacco Workers Strike of 1947, but lyrically the song stems from the 1900 copyrighted song ‘I’ll Overcome Some Day’.
The 60’s Protest Movement seemed to awaken people and to spawn so much resistance to what was wrong and also seemed to give hope for the future in a world living in the shadows of the threat of World War Three. Our song, ‘When Will We Overcome’ not only deals with the resistance to the Vietnam War and the governments’ violent response to the protests about the war but also to the treatment of the poor black population, treated as 3rd class citizens, about segregation and the evil of the white master class asking the question, sadly, that is still relevant as much today as it was then, ‘When will they overcome’?
We have a white President that couldn’t bear to personally go and emphasize with the poor black people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city but who, having been disturbed from his vacation agreed to fly over the devastated landscape in his helicopter on route to Washington DC and still days after, aid wasn’t given to those poor people, those poor black people and so, the question is still relevant, ‘When will they overcome’?
And the President screaming for war against Iraq (we all know he lied about his country’s reasons and intentions) and the once ‘Protest Singers’ have all gone deaf, dumb and blind, there’s no-one to give us a glimmer of hope to lead us out of the mire and the one we believed was different from the rest in the end turned out to be no different. As A.J. said ‘Bobby bought souls -‘you buy a soul, they then buy your records’! He performed for murdering Presidents and was just another in the ‘Entertainment Business’ as he gained awards, became rich, disrespected his parents and sang about murderers and Mafia bosses as he covered the tracks of his religious roots and ignored the cries of the 6 million of his people burning in the ovens, ‘Sold Your Soul To The Devil’, it’s a ‘no brainer’, I wonder if he’ll be buried with a cross or with a star!
And where is that fabled ‘American Freedom Road’ that leads you to that ‘American Dream’, ‘Closed for Repair’ for the majority!
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