Steve N Loudermilk: The Journey From “Tobacco Road” to “Indian Reservation”

Aug 21, 2012 by russellwhi57

Of the numerous visitors charted by Paul Revere & the Raiders, the largest was 1971′s “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian ).” It would be the only number one for the band, who’d obtained big hits like “Just Like Me,” “Kicks” and “Hungry.”By contrast, the Nashville Teens was a wonder band that only made the Top 20 in 1964 with the hard-edged “Tobacco Road.” Despite its name, the team was a British Invasion band produced by Mickie Most, who produced the sound of the Animals’ and Herman’s Hermits’ chain of hits.The man behind both these melodies is John N. Loudermilk, a prolific singer-songwriter of the 1960s and 70s who wrote place and country hits that included “Norman” (noted by Sue Thompson), “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” (the Casinos) and Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo.”Growing up in Durham, North Carolina in the 1930s and 40s provided the motivation for Loudermilk’s two greatest hits. Loudermilk has claimed that Durham had a bad side of town that encouraged him to produce a Southern poverty song in the custom of just one of his idols, blues man and protest musician Josh White.Tobacco Road was the rough and tumble section of town where large wooden boxes of tobacco were thrown down seriously to the water and loaded onto barges. The region attracted the kind of rowdy element shunned by Durham’s upstanding citizens.Originally documented as a folk song by Loudermilk in 1959, “Tobacco Road” went nowhere. But other musicians, from Lou Rawls to Edgar Cold weather to the Jefferson Airplane, caught on rapidly and introduced their own variations. Best known could be the Nashville Teens’ hard-hitting efficiency that presented two lead singers, Arthur Sharp and Ray Phillips. David Hawken played the traveling keyboard and Light emitting diode Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, then a sought-after session musician, played guitar on the facility track.Growing up, Loudermilk’s family was area of the Salvation Army church. Singing on the roads introduced the boy to performing; his mother’s missionary assist Cherokee Indians informed his 1959 song, “The Pale Faced Indian.”The song tells the tale of the “Trail of Tears”: the removal of the Cherokee Nation to reservations in what’s now Oklahoma. Approximately four thousand Cherokee died on the thousand-mile required trip over land and water in the 1830s.”The Pale Faced Indian” was registered in 1959 by Marvin Rainwater, a who performed in American Indian garb. Retitled “Indian Reservation,” the song was recorded in 1970 by Don Fardon, a Brit who broke the Most Truly Effective 20 on the Billboard charts.In 1971, lead musician Mark Lindsay of the now-renamed Raiders considered the song as a solo launch, nevertheless the group would record a variation that depended on Fardon’s arrangement. “Indian Reservation” became Columbia Records’ largest selling single at that time.

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