“Sink The Bismark” / “The Same Old Tale The Crow Told Me” – Doyle’s Space: Music Hall of Fame – SOS Award

Johnny Horton’s “Sink the Bismark” / “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me” was issued by Columbia Records as single 4-41568 on January 18, 1960, at a fascinating point in Horton’s career. The record paired one of his most dramatic historical story songs with a lighthearted country novelty number, demonstrating the remarkable range of material he could handle.

The original Columbia label gave the A-side the historically incorrect spelling “Sink the Bismark,” although the German battleship’s name is properly spelled Bismarck; later releases and reissues generally used “Sink the Bismarck.” The A-side was written by Horton and his manager and longtime collaborator Tillman Franks, with Don Law producing the recording.

The B-side, “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me,” was credited to Bill Carlisle. “Sink the Bismark” was a march-like country narrative based on the famous 1941 pursuit and destruction of the German battleship Bismarck during World War II. The Bismarck had entered the North Atlantic with the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, sank the British battlecruiser HMS Hood on May 24, 1941,

and then became the target of a massive British naval pursuit. After being located again, the Bismarck was attacked by British forces, disabled, and finally sunk on May 27. Horton and Franks compressed this complicated military episode into a fast-moving story song built around the repeated command to “sink the Bismark.” The song was not intended to be a comprehensive

historical account, but rather an exciting musical retelling that could be easily understood by a popular audience. The song had a direct connection with the 1960 British war film Sink the Bismarck!, starring Kenneth More. The movie’s producers were concerned that the Bismarck story was not especially well known to American audiences, and Horton’s song was commissioned in connection with the film with producer John Brabourne’s approval.

It became an effective promotional record for the picture, although an important distinction is that the song was not used in the actual movie. It was used in American theatrical promotion and trailers instead. The photograph on the original Columbia record jacket was also connected with the film: it showed a model of HMS Prince of Wales constructed for the production. The song contains some historical liberties and inaccuracies.

Most notably, the lyrics contain a mistaken comparison involving the sizes of the opposing guns and shells. Such errors did little to diminish the record’s effectiveness because Horton was creating a dramatic musical narrative rather than presenting a technical history of the battle. The pounding rhythm, military imagery, repeated refrain, and Horton’s unmistakable storytelling voice gave the record an almost cinematic quality. It was a natural successor to his earlier historical successes such as “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Johnny Reb.”

Commercially, “Sink the Bismark” was a substantial hit. It reached No. 6 on Billboard’s Hot C&W Sides chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Horton another major crossover success. It also reached No. 1 on the Canadian CHUM chart. Its No. 3 position on the Hot 100 made it one of Horton’s biggest pop successes, although it did not equal the extraordinary chart performance of “The Battle of New Orleans,” which had reached No. 1 on both the country and pop charts in 1959. “Sink the Bismark” nevertheless demonstrated that Horton could turn historical subjects into commercially successful records. There were several recorded versions of “Sink the Bismarck.”

The Bear Family collection Johnny Horton 1956–1960 documents two different Horton recordings, with listed running times of approximately 2:56 and 3:14. The existence of more than one recording is important because collectors sometimes encounter different versions while assuming that differences are merely the result of mastering or playback speed.

The commonly encountered Columbia single version is generally listed at about 3:12, while the later compilation documentation makes clear that Horton recorded more than one take or version. The song also appeared on Columbia’s Johnny Horton Makes History Volume II EP and on later Horton compilations. The song had an interesting afterlife beyond Horton’s original recording.

British singer Don Lang recorded his own version in 1960, which reached No. 43 on the British charts. A Czech country group, Plavci, recorded the song in 1976. The Blues Brothers also recorded “Sink the Bismarck” for a scene associated with the film The Blues Brothers, but the performance was ultimately left out of the finished movie. The song has consequently remained one of the better-known examples of the historical novelty or narrative song in American country music.

The B-side, “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me,” was an entirely different kind of record. Rather than recounting a historical event, it was a comic novelty song filled with absurd situations and exaggerated rural humor. Bill Carlisle is credited as the writer, and Horton performs it in a lively, deliberately old-fashioned country style. The song’s basic idea is that the

narrator keeps relating ridiculous stories that supposedly came from a crow, with the recurring refrain returning to “the same old tale” told by the bird. One of its best-known comic scenes involves a tomcat, a bulldog, and the narrator grabbing the bulldog’s tail, resulting in the animals running around and around. The humor of

“The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me” belongs to a much older American tradition of tall tales, nonsense verses, rural jokes, and novelty songs. Although Bill Carlisle received the songwriting credit on Horton’s 1960 recording, the song’s history is more complicated than that credit alone suggests. Related versions and verses existed before Carlisle’s recording, including material recorded by the Carolina Buddies and other performers.

Folk-song researchers have traced related “crow told me” material back into the 1920s, suggesting that at least some of the song’s verses circulated as traditional or floating comic material. Carlisle’s credited version therefore represents one stage in a much older tradition rather than necessarily the invention of every verse or idea. Horton’s recording history for the B-side is particularly interesting.

The Columbia single contained a version that differs from other versions subsequently issued. The Bear Family 1956–1960 collection documents two Horton recordings of “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me,” with running times of approximately 2:30 and 2:44. The version associated with the original single was not simply an ordinary album track recycled for the 45;

discographical information indicates that the single performance differed from the later version. This makes the B-side more interesting to collectors and serious Horton fans than its status as a novelty flip side might suggest. There is also an intriguing connection between “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me” and the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band.” The Grateful Dead song contains the line “That’s the story the crow told me,” which is strikingly similar to the older song’s central phrase.

The connection should not be presented as a proven case of Jerry Garcia borrowing directly from Horton, however, because the phrase and related material were already circulating in American folk and novelty music before Horton recorded the song. Horton’s record is nevertheless one documented example of the phrase being used in popular country music in 1960,

several years before “Uncle John’s Band” appeared. As a single, “Sink the Bismark” / “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me” is a particularly revealing example of Johnny Horton’s artistry. The A-side continued his successful practice of turning historical events into exciting, accessible story songs, while the B-side showed his willingness to dip into the older comic and folk traditions of country music. The contrast between the two sides is almost startling:

one is a dramatic account of a famous World War II naval battle, while the other is an intentionally goofy rural tall tale. Yet both fit Horton’s larger identity as a storyteller. The record also belongs to the final year of his career, making it especially significant in retrospect. Horton died in an automobile accident on November 5, 1960, less than ten months after “Sink the Bismark” was released.

The single therefore stands as both a major Horton hit and an intriguing historical artifact. “Sink the Bismark” reached No. 3 on the pop chart and No. 6 on the country chart, while “The Same Old Tale the Crow Told Me” remained a non-charting B-side but has developed a following among collectors and listeners interested in traditional country novelty material.

The original misspelling of “Bismarck,” the connection with the 1960 film, the existence of multiple Horton recordings of both songs, the historical inaccuracies in the A-side, and the much older folk background of the B-side all contribute to making this two-sided Columbia 45 considerably more interesting than its simple hit-record status might suggest.