The A Team (Barry Sadler song) explained

The "A" Team
Type:	single
Artist:	Barry Sadler
Album:	The 'A' Team
B-Side:	An Empty Glass
Recorded:	1966
Genre:	Patriotic
Label:	RCA Victor
Producer:	Andy Wiswell
Prev Title:	The Ballad of the Green Berets
Prev Year:	1966

"The "A" Team" is a 1966 song and charting single by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. It was Sadler's second and final American patriotic hit song at the time of the Vietnam War, following the success of "The Ballad of the Green Berets".^[1]

The song's lyrics are about the basic twelve-man Special Forces unit.^[2] It is a marching song in six-eight time with music by Leonard Whitcup Cimino to lyrics by Barry Sadler and Phyllis Fairbanks. The lyrics commence "12 men strong and true 12 men fight for you on their heads a beret of green 12 men, invincible, the A-Team."

"The A Team", the title song to Sadler's second album, made it to No. 28 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 on that year,^[3] but its success was seen as a disappointment following the No. 1 "Ballad of the Green Berets".^[4]

Notes and References

1. Billboard - 1966 May 28 BARRY SADLER OF THE GREEN BERETS SINGS "THE 'A' TEAM" RCA Victor LPM 3605 (M); LSP 3605 (S) Sadler mixes a potent blend of lyric ballads, with his singles hit, "The A Team," heading the list. Not all are "war" songs, with "Time" .."
2. Richard D. Barnet and Larry L. Burriss. Controversies of the Music Industry. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. p. 54.
3. Joel Whitburn. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. Billboard Publications, 1985. p. 274.
4. Marc Leepson. Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. p. 91.