Dear Uncle Sam by Loretta Lynn

Album: I Like 'Em Country (1966)

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In this #4 country hit, Loretta Lynn sings from the perspective of a woman whose husband is killed in the Vietnam War. Lynn was skeptical when her husband, Doolittle, suggested she write a war song after they heard one of several news bulletins on the radio about the conflict. "He looked over at me and said, 'Loretta, why don't you write a song about the war?'," she recalled in her 2012 book Honky Tonk Girl: My Life In Lyrics. "I said, 'Doo, I don't know anything good about war, so I really don't know what there is good to write about it.' He said, 'What's wrong with writing to Uncle Sam?' And I realized he's the man that all the mothers ought to write to."
That's Nashville saxophonist Boots Randolph playing "Taps" throughout the climax. Lynn said they had to do a little creative thinking to get the right sound: "They put him in the bathroom of the studio with the door open because the sound was not sounding right in the studio."
When Lynn plays this live, she always dedicates it to her husband.

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