Quote:He performed the song on television on January 30, 1966 on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on other TV shows including "Hollywood Palace" and "The Jimmy Dean Show."
Roughly 56,000 of the 58K Americans who would die in Vietnam were alive when Barry Sadler sang that song on Ed Sullivan in Jan of '66. Not a fan of treacly songs about war.
Quote:Parodies[edit]
In 1968, The Beach Bums, an ad hoc group featuring a young Bob Seger, recorded "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret", chronicling the adventures of a draft dodger. The record was withdrawn after a cease and desist letter from Sadler.
The Residents parodied the song on their Third Reich & Roll album.
Another parody was used on the episode of Saturday Night Live that William Shatner hosted in 1986, called "Ollie North, The Mute Marine." Shatner participated in the sketch, outfitted in a USMC Class A uniform, alluding to Oliver North's refusal to speak about his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair; Shatner spoke no words.
The song is used to humorous effect in Michael Moore's film Canadian Bacon as ill-informed Americans prepare for an invasion by Canada.
The movie Wag the Dog includes the fictitious unit 303 Special Forces' song "The Men of the 303", which is played to a similar but original tune written by Huey Lewis for the film.
In the film Caddyshack, Carl Spackler, played by Bill Murray, mumbles the song under his breath while he is connecting the wires to the plunger as he prepares for his final battle with his gopher nemesis.
Comedian Paul Shanklin parodied the song with "Ballad of the Black Beret", referring to the Clinton sex scandal, on his 1999 album Simply Reprehensible.
Though its usage here is not a parody, in an episode of Cheers, Cliff aborts his plans to emigrate to Canada with his love interest when Sam, Woody, and Frasier appeal to his patriotic side by singing this song.
The internet critic SF Debris uses the music with lyrics about the Red Shirts in Star Trek who regularly die on away missions.
2
