I Ain't Marching Any More is Phil Ochs' second LP, released on Elektra Records in 1965. History Ochs performs alone on twelve original songs, an interpretation of Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" set to music (much as Poe's "The Bells" had been set to music on the previous album) and a cover of Ewan MacColl's "The Ballad of the Carpenter". Of the twelve originals, probably the most noted was the title track, with its distinctive trilling guitar part, that spoke of a soldier sick of fighting. Also of note was the album closer, "Here's to the State of Mississippi", a biting criticism of that state's lack of civil rights and generally bigoted attitude. Other important songs include "Draft Dodger Rag" (assailing those "red blooded Americans" who were in favor of US participation in the Vietnam War but did not fight because they were just summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots), "That Was The President" (a tribute to John F. Kennedy written soon after his assassination), "Talking Birmingham Jam" (which used the traditional talking blues form to assail the racist leaders of Birmingham) and "Links on the Chain" (attacking labor unions for excluding African-Americans and failing to support civil rights). Ochs showed great thematic versatility on the album, including not just blatantly anti-war or protest songs but also poetry (Alfred Noyes, John Rooney, and Ewan MacColl) and songs less in lock-step with the contemporary American radical left. He noted, for instance, in the liner notes that his Marxist friends couldn't understand why he wrote "That Was the President," dryly adding that that was one of the reasons he wasn't a Marxist. However, Ochs backed away from the song's hero worship of John F. Kennedy by explaining that "after the assassination, Fidel Castro aptly pointed out that only fools could rejoice at such a tragedy, for systems, not men, are the enemy." Ochs showed more socialist sympathies with the songs "The Men Behind the Guns" and "Ballad of the Carpenter," with its memorable lyric "Jesus was a working man." (Ochs wrote in the liner notes that "songs like this" were one of the reasons the State Department blocked Ewan MacColl from entering the U.S., adding that this was unwise given "the quality of culture in America.") However, more doctrinaire socialists may have had mixed feelings about "That's What I Want to Hear," in which Ochs tells an out-of-work man to stop begging and fight