Country Joe & The Fish

Mentioning Country Joe & the Fish to people born before 1955 usually triggers recognition tied mainly to the widely circulated “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” That track, however, represented only a narrow slice of the ensemble’s identity. Among the earliest and most prominent psychedelic outfits to emerge from the San Francisco Bay Area, the group stood out for its elusive character. Joe McDonald authored one of the decade’s most confrontational anti-war statements yet remained one of the few figures on that scene who had actually worn a military uniform.

McDonald entered the world on January 1, 1942, into a politically progressive household and received his name in tribute to Joseph Stalin. During World War II many left-leaning observers viewed the Soviet leader as a heroic opponent of Hitler at a moment when Allied governments hesitated. He spent his childhood in El Monte, outside Los Angeles, immersed in union organizing and other progressive campaigns while absorbing R&B and Dixieland jazz. Early performances found him playing trombone in jazz ensembles and guitar in folk settings before he enlisted in the Navy at eighteen and served through most of the early 1960s.

After his discharge in 1964, McDonald resumed performing and, with Blair Hardman, recorded The Goodbye Blues; he also launched the radical publication Et Tu. He soon relocated to Berkeley, ostensibly to attend college, yet quickly integrated into the local folk circuit. Solo sets mixed material by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Woody Guthrie with original pieces and carried an explicit political charge. Issues then gaining traction included civil rights, the Cuban embargo, conditions for migrant farmworkers, U.S. policy toward the Dominican Republic, and the Food for Peace program.

Those concerns led McDonald to assemble two ensembles: the Berkeley String Quartet, featuring Bob Cooper on twelve-string guitar, Tom Lightjheiser on bass, and Carl Shrager on washboard and guitar, and the Instant Action Jug Band, whose fluid roster sometimes exceeded a dozen players ready to appear at rallies or street actions. One participant was Barry Melton, a guitarist and singer born in Brooklyn and raised in Los Angeles, whose teenage credits already included appearances at the Ash Grove before his family moved to Berkeley.

From those associations sprang Country Joe & the Fish, initially conceived as a recording identity. McDonald’s radical journal Rag Baby supplied the vehicle; the October 1965 Rag Baby EP contained four tracks—two by the new group and two by Peter Krug. On that record McDonald sang and played harmonica and acoustic guitar, Melton handled vocals and electric guitar, Shrager added washboard and kazoo, Bill Steele played washtub bass, and Mike Beardslee contributed vocals.

Manager ED Denson suggested the name Country Joe & the Fish, drawing on Mao Zedong’s metaphor of revolutionaries as fish swimming in the sea of the people. An alternative, “Country Mao & the Fish,” was considered but set aside. “Country Joe” simultaneously referenced McDonald’s leadership role and served as a nickname for Stalin. The choice proved multilayered—amusing to the unaware, pointed to those who caught the allusions, and a playful inversion of contemporaneous band names such as Paul Revere & the Raiders or Mouse & the Traps. In 1965, with the John Birch Society active in California and memories of the McCarthy era still fresh, the name’s political resonances were unmistakable to ideological opponents.

Membership shifted over the ensuing months while the band honed its sound at venues including the Jabberwock, the Avalon Ballroom, and the original Fillmore Auditorium. By mid-1966 the ensemble had moved toward electric rock instrumentation. A second self-produced EP appeared in June, now featuring McDonald and Melton on electric guitars, sixteen-year-old Bruce Barthol on electric bass, New York native David Cohen on guitar and keyboards, Paul Armstrong on multiple instruments, and jazz drummer John Francis Gunning. The record earned radio play as far as New York and London, prompting a contract with Vanguard Records, previously known for classical and folk releases.

Maynard and Seymour Solomon, who had earlier signed the blacklisted Weavers, confronted new challenges with an electric band whose politically charged material echoed the Blues Project or early Doors yet lacked deference. Sessions at Sierra Sound in Berkeley, supervised by Sam Charters, yielded Electric Music for the Mind and Body. “Super Bird,” a pointed attack on Lyndon Johnson, was included, while the popular “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” was omitted. Issued in February 1967, the album blended blues, jazz, classical, folk, and rock elements under a psychedelic sheen. Cohen’s organ, the interlocking guitars of Melton, Cohen, and McDonald, McDonald’s light tenor, and the rhythm section of Barthol and new drummer Gary “Chicken” Hirsh drew widespread acclaim. The single “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” reached only number 98, yet college airplay and word-of-mouth propelled the LP into the Top 40.

Encouraged, Vanguard recorded a follow-up that summer. The label now led with “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” whose elaborate production graced the resulting album. Early pressings included the satirical “Fish Game” insert. Although the second record proved somewhat more accessible than its predecessor, the pair together marked the group’s creative and commercial summit. National touring ensued, highlighted by the use of light shows and an appearance at the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, preserved in the subsequent documentary performing “Section 43.”

The song’s trajectory shifted dramatically after a July 1968 performance at the Schaefer Summer Music Festival in Central Park. Hirsh proposed replacing the spelling cheer with an expletive; the crowd embraced the revision, which then became standard. The original recording consequently received renewed AM airplay, introducing the band to younger listeners. By Woodstock in 1969, festival organizers recorded the uncensored cheer without hesitation as McDonald performed solo.

Internal tensions surfaced in autumn 1967 when McDonald was urged to view himself as the central figure. A temporary split ensued, followed by eventual reunions, yet the interruption affected momentum. Together, recorded amid the discord, showcased Melton and Hirsh more prominently while McDonald’s contributions remained limited. Barthol departed in mid-1968 and Hirsh by year’s end. Here We Are Again, issued in spring 1969, introduced David Getz on drums, with Jack Casady guesting on bass; Cohen’s exit prompted an all-star Fillmore West jam later released as a live album. A stable lineup of McDonald, Melton, Getz, and Peter S. Albin coalesced for six months in 1969. McDonald reassembled the group for Woodstock, after which the final configuration—Melton, Mark Kapner on keyboards, Doug Metzner on bass, and Greg Dewey on drums—capitalized on the festival’s afterglow.

McDonald launched a solo career in spring 1970 with an album of Woody Guthrie songs and followed it a year later with the electric blues set Hold on It’s Coming. He sustained anti-war activism, joining the F.T.A. revue that produced both a film and a place on President Nixon’s enemies list. Melton continued performing into the 1970s before becoming an attorney.

Across subsequent decades McDonald issued numerous solo recordings, revived Rag Baby, and periodically reunited with Melton—whose participation is required for official use of the band name—along with Cohen, Barthol, and Hirsh amid renewed anti-war sentiment surrounding Iraq. Two best-of compilations exist, and the original Rag Baby EPs appeared on CD in 1994. In 2018 Craft Recordings released the four-LP retrospective The Wave of Electrical Sound, encompassing the first two 1967 albums plus I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die in mono and stereo on 180-gram vinyl; the mono Electric Music for the Mind and Body featured alternate cover art. The package reproduced 1967 ephemera including The Fish Game, a fan-club booklet, and a Tom Weller calendar, plus a DVD of David Peoples’ documentary How We Stopped the War and a 24-page book with rare photographs and an essay by Alec Palao. Bassist Bruce Barthol died on February 20, 2023, at age 75.