Song Memorializing Kennedy, King, Legends
Song Memorializing Kennedy, King, Legends
[1] DANIEL:
Good morning Grok. Help me remember a song that came out in the late 60s or 70s that was a memorial for Kennedy, King, and other legends. The 'hook' was something like "has anybody seen..."
[2] GROK:
Good morning! I think the song you're thinking of is "Abraham, Martin and John," written by Dick Holler and first released by Dion in 1968. It's a poignant tribute to assassinated leaders—Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and (in the final verse) Robert "Bobby" Kennedy—lamenting how "the good die young." The hook is the repeated line in each verse: "Anybody here seen my old friend [name]? / Can you tell me where he's gone?"
This fits your description perfectly: it came out in the late 1960s (right after King's and Robert Kennedy's assassinations), serves as a memorial to those figures (and Lincoln as another "legend"), and uses that "has anybody seen" phrasing as the central refrain. Dion's version was a major hit, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968–69, and it inspired covers by artists like Marvin Gaye (1969), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1969), and even later ones by Harry Belafonte and Ray Charles. If this isn't the one, feel free to share more details!