Fighting For Freedom Article & MP3 By Mad Jim Hall

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM: I was watching CNN Headline news on Christmas Eve (1990) after we had sent thousands of our family and friends to The Middle East to free Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion. The top story was about a small group of people standing in the snow outside of a skyscraper with signs chanting "Don't Fight For Oil". I felt it was in poor taste and quite disrespectful that a major network would run this footage as the top story on CHRISTMAS EVE with so many of my friends from Moody Air Force Base (Valdosta GA) and our family members away from home getting ready to go to war. I thought to myself "We're not fighting for oil. we're fighting for freedom", then I wrote the song.

I recorded "Fighting For Freedom" them made four copies on cassette tapes and addressed them to any Army, any Air Force, any Navy, and any Marine then mailed them to the troops. I gave a copy of the song to every radio station in Valdosta and it aired for three months.

WALB out of Albany GA sent Jerry Gunn to do a news story. He taped me singing the complete song then interviewed me. I watched the news every night to see the story when it ran. One night I heard the news anchor say "Next we have a musician in Valdosta who expressed his feelings on the war in a song". As I watched a commercial getting ready to see the story run I heard "We interupt this broadcast for a special report", I WAS PREEMPTED BY THE WAR! The story finally ran on Martin Luther Kings birthday. One month later I was talking to one of my customers about the song and asked if he'd like to hear it. He told me he saw the video on WALB's Gill Patrick Show. I had no idea what he was talking about and he explaind the video to me (to this day I haven't seen it). Somebody from the TV staion took footage of the Albany National Guard leaving for Saudi Arabia and edited it over the recording that Jerry made. Gill recived so many requests for the video that he closed his show with it every day for a week.

The Valdosta Daily Times did a front page story on the song. You can read the article and hear the song below.

Many months after we forced Husain's troops out of Kuwait I received a letter from an armed forces member who heard the song. He was from Waycross GA and told me how much he appreciated hearing it. He said "It sounded like home to me". This meant more to me than the radio airplay, the newspaer article, and the TV news story combined.