One Tin Soldier

"One Tin Soldier" is a 1960s counterculture era anti-war song written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. Canadian pop group The Original Caste first recorded the song in 1969 for both the TA label and its parent Bell label. The track went to number 6 on the RPM Magazine charts and hit the number 1 position on CHUM AM in Toronto, and reached number 34 on the American pop charts in early 1970.

In 1971, a cover was a hit in the U.S. for Coven, whose recording was featured in the film Billy Jack. The single went to number 26 on the Billboard pop chart before it was pulled from radio by the film's producer. A re-recorded version by Coven made the Billboard chart in 1973, peaking at number 79.

A 1972, Skeeter Davis' cover version had moderate success on the American country charts but did very well in Canada, peaking at number 4 on the Canadian country chart and number 2 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart. Davis received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Country Vocal for the song.

Tin soldier

Tin soldiers are miniature figures of toy soldiers that are very popular in the world of collecting. They can be bought finished or in a raw state to be hand-painted. They are generally made of pewter, tin, lead, other metals or plastic. Often very elaborate scale models of battle scenes, known as dioramas, are created for their display. Tin soldiers were originally almost two-dimensional figures, often called "little Eilerts" or "flats". They were the first toy soldiers to be mass-produced. Though largely superseded in popularity from the late 19th century by fully rounded three-dimensional lead figures, these flat tin soldiers continue to be produced.

Casting

"Real" tin soldiers, i.e., ones cast from an alloy of tin and lead, can also be home-made. Moulds are available for sale in some hobby shops. Earlier, the moulds were made of metal; nowadays they are often made of hard rubber which can stand the temperature of the molten metal, around 250 °C.

Literature

The best-known tin soldier in literature is the unnamed title character in Hans Christian Andersen's 1838 fairy tale The Steadfast Tin Soldier. It concerns a tin soldier who had only one leg because "he had been left to the last, and then there was not enough of the melted tin to finish him." He falls in love with a dancer made of paper and after much adventuring, including being swallowed by a fish, the two are consumed together by fire, leaving nothing but tin melted "in the shape of a little tin heart."

Tin Soldier (song)

"Tin Soldier" is a rock song written by Steve Marriott (credited to Marriott/Lane). It was originally released on 2 December 1967, by the popular English band Small Faces. The song peaked at number nine in the UK singles chart. It has since been covered by many other notable rock artists.

Song profile

Tin Soldier was originally written by Steve Marriott for singer P.P. Arnold, but Marriott liked it so much he kept it himself. It was a song that he wrote to his first wife, Jenny Rylance. P.P. Arnold can be heard singing backing vocals on the song. The song signalled a return to the band's R&B roots after their previous forays into psychedelic rock and other musical experiments. When Tin Soldier was released the BBC informed the band that the last line of the song had to be removed from all TV and radio broadcasts, mistakenly believing that Marriott sang "sleep with you", when in fact the lyric is "sit with you". Marriott explained that the song was about getting into someone's mind—not their body.Tin Soldier reached number nine in the UK Singles Chart and remains one of Small Faces' best known songs.

Tin Soldier (novella)

"Tin Soldier" is a 17,500-word novella written by Joan D. Vinge, her first published work.

It was originally published in Orbit 14, edited by Damon Knight, in 1974. "Tin Soldier" was first republished in the 1977 anthology Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent.

Plot

"Tin Soldier" tells the story of Maris, an ex-soldier who, following wounds sustained in battle, has received cybernetic implants that, as a side effect, slow his aging to "about five years for every hundred" (he is 115 years old as the story begins, though physically he looks "about twenty-five"), and Brandy (short for Branduin), a female starship crew member.

Maris has started a bar named "Tin Soldier" in the spaceport town of New Piraeus. None of his customers know his real name and call him "Tin Soldier" – or "Soldier" for short – after his bar.

Only women are allowed to crew starships since male bodies cannot handle the stresses of space travel. Since trips between star systems require decades (while the female crew do not age due to relativistic effects), Soldier does a brisk business among starship crews because, apparently never ageing, he is the only familiar face they can see, decade after decade, whenever they come into port.