John D. Loudermilk, Whose Hits Included 'Tobacco Road,' Dies at 82. By
WILLIAM GRIMES. CORRECTION APPENDEDJohn D. Loudermilk, a country singer
and prolific songwriter whose dozens of hits in the 1960s and '70s
included 'Tobacco Road' by the Nashville Teens, 'Then You Can Tell Me
Goodbye' by the Casinos and 'Indian Reservation' by Paul Revere and the
Raiders, died on Wednesday at his home in Christiana, Tenn. He was 82.
His death was announced on Facebook by the songwriter Bobby Braddock, a
friend. The cause was a heart attack, said his son Mike.. As Johnny
Dee, Mr. Loudermilk made several records in a soft rockabilly style in
the 1950s, but he found his niche after George Hamilton IV recorded his
teen lament 'A Rose and a Baby Ruth' in 1956 and Eddie Cochran scored
his first solid hit with a cover of Mr. Loudermilk's 'Sittin' in the
Balcony' a year later. After moving to Nashville from his native North
Carolina, he came under the wing of the producer and guitar virtuoso
Chet Atkins. He soon joined the powerful publishing company Acuff-Rose
and began turning out songs in every style: the perky pop of 'Norman'
(1961) for Sue Thompson; the mournful ballad 'Ebony Eyes' for the
Everly Brothers' (1961); and the loping western style of 'Abilene'
(1963), written with Bob Gibson and others, which became Mr. Hamilton's
biggest hit. Mr. Loudermilk drew on his poverty-stricken childhood in
Durham, N.C., for 'Tobacco Road,' which he recorded in 1960. It became
a Top 20 hit for the British invasion group the Nashville Teens in 1964
and was later recorded by dozens of other artists, including the
Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and War, the Blues Magoos and David Lee
Roth. 'Indian Reservation,' first recorded by Marvin Rainwater in 1959
as 'The Pale Faced Indian,' told the story, in impassioned terms, of
the forced removal of Cherokee Indians from the southeastern United
States to Oklahoma in the 1830s. As 'Indian Reservation (The Lament of
the Cherokee Reservation Indian),' it became a Top 20 hit for the
British singer Don Fardon in 1968 and a No. 1 hit for Paul Revere and
the Raiders in 1971. Mr. Loudermilk, who enjoyed telling a good story,
convinced the D.J. Casey Kasem that he had been inspired to write the
song when he was stranded by the roadside during a blizzard and a
mysterious Cherokee chief, Bloody Bear Tooth, led him to safety and
asked him to tell the rest of the world, in song, of the sufferings of
his people. Mr. Kasem repeated the tale on his radio program 'American
Top 40,' giving it currency. In a wink to record buyers, Mr. Loudermilk
added 'P.S. My regards to Bloody Bear Tooth' on the sleeve of his 1971
album 'Volume 1: Elloree. John D. Loudermilk, whose middle initial did
not stand for anything, was born in Durham on March 31, 1934. His
father, also named John D., was an illiterate carpenter. His mother,
Pauline, was a homemaker and Salvation Army missionary. He was a cousin
of Ira and Charlie Loudermilk, known professionally as the country
music duo the Louvin Brothers. When John was 7, his father made him a
ukulele from a cigar box and his mother taught him to play it. He soon
learned, in addition to guitar, an assortment of instruments, which he
played in a Salvation Army band. By his early teens, he had appeared on
local radio and television stations. While attending the University of
North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, Mr. Loudermilk discovered the work of
Kahlil Gibran and began writing poems, one of which, 'A Rose and a Baby
Ruth,' he set to music. The Durham television station where he worked
as a set painter and member of the house band let him play it on air.
Mr. Hamilton, visiting the station, heard it and recorded it for
Colonial, a label based in Chapel Hill. Mr. Loudermilk joined the
label, for which he recorded 'Sittin' in the Balcony' in 1957 and, as
the lead singer of Ebe Sneezer and His Epidemics, the comedy song
'Asiatic Flu. After Mr. Cochran's success with 'Sittin' in the
Balcony,' Mr. Loudermilk dropped out of college and moved to Nashville,
where he recorded just one Top 40 song, 'Language of Love' (1961). But
he made an immediate impact there as a songwriter. With Kitty Wells and
Roy Bodkin, he wrote the 1959 country hit 'Amigo's Guitar,' performed
by Ms. Wells. That year, Stonewall Jackson scored the biggest hit of
his career with 'Waterloo,' by Mr. Loudermilk and Marijohn Wilkin. His
many hits included 'Sad Movies (Make Me Cry),' written for Sue Thompson
and recorded by her in 1961. It was inspired, he said, by a woman who
cried at the end of the movie 'Spartacus. He supplied Ms. Thompson with
yet another hit in 'Paper Tiger' (1964). Mr. Loudermilk's 'Talk Back
Trembling Lips' became a country hit for Ernest Ashworth in 1963 and a
pop hit the same year for Johnny Tillotson. A striking example of the
adaptability of his songs was 'Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye,' recorded
by the Cincinnati doo-wop group the Casinos and translated into an
urbane Nashville idiom by Eddy Arnold a year later. Mr. Loudermilk was
inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976. In the
1980s, he turned his attention to the study of ethnomusicology and
indulging his passion for sailing and chasing hurricanes. His first
marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his son Mike, he is survived
by two other children from his first marriage, Rick and John, and by
his wife, the former Susan Chollette. 'I'm looking for the most
different thing I can find,' Mr. Loudermilk told The Tennessean of
Nashville in 1961 in a discussion of his songwriting style.
'Everybody's writing 'I love you truly. You've got to find something
new. I talk to drunks at the bus station, browse through kiddie books
at the public library, get phrases from college kids and our
babysitter. You've got to be looking all the time. Correction:
September 26, 2016, Monday This article has been revised to reflect the
following correction: An obituary on Friday about the songwriter John
D. Loudermilk misstated the surname of the singer who had a country hit
with Mr. Loudermilk's song 'Talk Back Trembling Lips. He is Ernest
Ashworth, not Ashforth. And the obituary misspelled the stage name of a
singer who had a hit with 'Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye. He is Eddy
Arnold, not Eddie. (His full name is Richard Edward Arnold.) PHOTOS:
John D. Loudermilk, top, in an undated photograph, and in the studio in
the mid-1960s, left. The cover of his 1969 album, above. He was
inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976.
(PHOTOGRAPHS BY GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS; RCA RECORDS; RCA VICTOR).
