John D. Loudermilk


John Dee Loudermilk Jr. was an American singer and songwriter. Although he had his own recording career during the 1950s and 1960s, he was primarily known as a songwriter.
His best-known songs include "Indian Reservation", a 1968 hit for UK singer Don Fardon and a U.S. No. 1 hit in 1971 for The Raiders. He wrote "Ebony Eyes", a 1961 U.K. No. 1 and U.S. No. 8 for the Everly Brothers; "Tobacco Road", a 1964 Top 20 hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. for Nashville Teens; "This Little Bird", a U.K. No. 6 for Marianne Faithfull in 1965; and "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye", a U.S. Top Ten hit in 1967 for the Casinos and No. 1 country hit for Eddy Arnold the following year.

Early life and career

Loudermilk was born in Durham, North Carolina, to Pauline and John D. Loudermilk Sr., an illiterate carpenter. The family were members of the Salvation Army. He was influenced by Church singing. His cousins Ira and Charlie Loudermilk were known professionally as the Louvin Brothers. Loudermilk was a graduate of Campbell College, a private North Carolina Baptist Convention-owned college in Buies Creek, North Carolina.
As a young boy, Loudermilk learned the guitar, and while still in his teens wrote a poem that he set to music, "A Rose and a Baby Ruth". The owners of local television station WTVD, where he worked as a graphic artist, allowed him to play the song on-air, resulting in country musician George Hamilton IV putting it on record in 1956. It spent 20 weeks on the Billboard magazine pop chart, reaching No. 6.
After Eddie Cochran had his first hit record with Loudermilk's "Sittin' in the Balcony", Loudermilk's career path was underway.
Loudermilk recorded some of his own songs—including "Sittin' in the Balcony", which reached No. 38 on the pop charts in 1957—as "Johnny Dee", for the North Carolina–based Colonial Records label.
In 1958, he signed with Columbia Records and recorded five unsuccessful singles to 1959, including the original version of "Tobacco Road". In 1961, he signed with RCA Victor, where he had a number of hits:
It was as a songwriter that Loudermilk made his mark. In 1963 he wrote another all-time hit for George Hamilton IV, "Abilene". Working out of Nashville, Tennessee, Loudermilk became one of the most productive songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s, penning country and pop music hits for the Everly Brothers, Johnny Tillotson, Chet Atkins, the Nashville Teens, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Johnny Cash, Marianne Faithfull, Stonewall Jackson, Kris Jensen, and Sue Thompson. His song "The Pale Faced Indian" was a hit in the 1970s; and "Tobacco Road" was a hit in the 1960s and 1970s for, among others, the Nashville Teens, Blues Magoos, Eric Burdon & War, and David Lee Roth. Several singers recorded "Midnight Bus"; Loudermilk commented that the best was by Betty McQuade from Melbourne, Australia.
After more or less retiring from songwriting, Loudermilk helped several songwriters advocacy groups including Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Songwriters Guild of America.
After suffering from prostate cancer and respiratory ailments, Loudermilk died on September 21, 2016, at his home in Christiana, Tennessee. He was 82. The actual cause of death was a heart attack, according to his son Michael.
The John D. Loudermilk Collection is in the Southern Folklife Collection of the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Indian Reservation"

A well-known story surrounding one of Loudermilk's songs is that, when he was asked by the Viva! NashVegas radio show about the origins of the Raiders' hit song "Indian Reservation", he fabricated the story that he wrote the song after his car was snowed in by a blizzard and he was taken in by Cherokee Indians. A self-professed prankster, he spun the tale that a Cherokee chieftain, "Bloody Bear Tooth" asked him to make a song about his people's plight and the Trail of Tears, even going so far as to claim that he had later been awarded "the first medal of the Cherokee Nation", not for writing the song, but for his "blood"; further fabricating that his "great-great grandparents, Homer and Matilda Loudermilk" were listed on the Dawes Rolls. Had this tall tale been true, he would have been a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, which he was not.
In spite of the song's title, neither the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, nor the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, nor the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma communities are known as "reservations". But privately, the family was always told the lineage claim was true.

Notable compositions