John D. Loudermilk

Although his music isn't exactly weird, John D. Loudermilk was one of the weirdest figures of early rock & roll. Much more famous as a songwriter than a performer (although he made plenty of records), his material was incredibly erratic. He could range from the most mindless, sappy pop to a hard-bitten, bluesy tune that rang with as much authentic grit as a Mississippi Delta blues classic. That tune was "Tobacco Road," and if he'd written nothing else, Loudermilk would have been worth a footnote in any history of popular music.

Loudermilk wrote plenty of other songs, though, in a lengthy career that saw him straddling the fields of rock, pop, and country. Originally striving to be a performer in a very mild pop/rockabilly style, he found his first success as a songwriter when <a href="spotify:artist:6G39Gakqv1r26pZzijSWti">George Hamilton IV</a> took "A Rose and a Baby Ruth" into the Top Ten in 1956. Recording as Johnny Dee, Loudermilk made a few singles for the small <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Colonial%22">Colonial</a> label in North Carolina. The best and most successful of these was "Sittin' in the Balcony," which made the Top 40 in 1957. <a href="spotify:artist:1p0t3JtUTayV2wb1RGN9mO">Eddie Cochran</a>'s cover, based closely on Loudermilk's version (though performed with more force and style), stole most of Johnny Dee's thunder when it outsold the original by a wide margin, making the Top 20.

Johnny Dee changed his name back to John Loudermilk when he signed with <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Columbia%22">Columbia</a> in 1958, and also decided to concentrate on songwriting when he relocated to Nashville, eventually working for <a href="spotify:artist:4dZrt8Ong5t7YYpvbfp0RU">Chet Atkins</a> at <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22RCA%22">RCA</a>. Although Loudermilk had a pleasantly passable voice, his early records aren't worth much, often purveying material that was mindlessly lightweight or, worse, idiotically humorous ("Asiatic Flu"). "Tobacco Road" was a different story -- a stark, stomping tale of hard-bitten Southern poverty, it had a strong blues flavor that was virtually absent from most of his material. It took a one-shot British Invasion group, <a href="spotify:artist:5ZMLeokWf9ZKDStGUhokji">the Nashville Teens</a>, to fully realize the song's menace in their magnificent, hard-rocking 1964 cover, which made the U.S. Top 20. The song was also covered by <a href="spotify:artist:1zJBFCev9UwOMcrZsLi2od">Lou Rawls</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2qFr8w5sWUITRlzZ9kZotF">the Jefferson Airplane</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3UNrI3SG1l2ezKikxQ2zuk">Edgar Winter</a>, and others.

"Tobacco Road" was far from Loudermilk's only success. In the late '50s and early '60s, he supplied material for country stars, teen idols, and pop/rock singers, including "Waterloo" (<a href="spotify:artist:0NqxUSg57tX1o1WG7VU1Vp">Stonewall Jackson</a>), "Angela Jones" (Johnny Ferguson), "Ebony Eyes" (<a href="spotify:artist:4ACplpEqD6JIVgKrafauzs">the Everly Brothers</a>), "Norman" (<a href="spotify:artist:4KCnuZQWRl9FEwAcduZhP9">Sue Thompson</a>), and "Abilene" (<a href="spotify:artist:6G39Gakqv1r26pZzijSWti">George Hamilton IV</a>). In the mid-'60s, he was briefly in vogue in Britain: <a href="spotify:artist:5ZMLeokWf9ZKDStGUhokji">the Nashville Teens</a> did both "Tobacco Road" and "Google Eyes" (the latter of which was a hit in the U.K., though a flop stateside), and <a href="spotify:artist:7mlge4peaoNgzTsY6M32RB">Marianne Faithfull</a> had a British hit with the moody "This Little Bird."

Loudermilk continued to record on his own, though more as an afterthought than a specialty, reserving most of his focus for writing songs for other performers. Much of his material followed a faint-hearted, goofy pop/novelty thread, which made his somber efforts seem all the more incongruous. His last big songwriting success was another of his serious-minded tunes, "Indian Reservation," which topped the charts for <a href="spotify:artist:32HPpJAhgnGPT3V7UOggzi">Paul Revere & the Raiders</a> in 1971 (it had previously been a hit for British singer <a href="spotify:artist:1cqaF1Hz5pEtXVnthnFVmU">Don Fardon</a>). Loudermilk subsequently withdrew from professional activities to spend time studying ethnomusicology. He died at his home in Christiana, Tennessee in September 2016 at the age of 82. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi