Johnny Rebel and the Cajun Roots of Right‐Wing Rock

Abstract

This work examines the linkage between the racist songs of 1960s‐era singer Johnny Rebel and the more violently racist music in the 1970s and after. The research included locating and interviewing the elusive Johnny Rebel, securing copies of his lyrics, establishing context with other primary sources and secondary sources, and analyzing the similarities and differences in the messages of the two eras. The article concludes that Rebel's example influenced British racist musicians, notably the punk rock band Skrewdriver, which inspired other right‐wing musicians. In both instances, hate music proves to be a useful barometer of the social pathologies engendered by rapid social change. Right‐wing rock bears close watching for two reasons. First there is the undeniable power of its lyrics when they are combined with the music in politicized social settings. Finally, unresolved, deeply troubling contemporary issues facing Europeans and, especially, Americans suggest that hate music may increase its presence in the short term.

Notes

1. Leroy “Happy Fats” LeBlanc began his career in the 1930s with the legendary Rayne‐Bo Ramblers. He and Doc Guidry wrote the classic Cajun song, “Colinda,” in 1946. Billy Joe Norris's life and career remain pretty much a mystery. Johnny Rebel described him as a “good friend,” but lost track of him decades ago.

2. The anti‐Christian overtones of Black Metal groups are examined by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind.

3. Though the argument is not particularly well‐made, the issues of racism and elite manipulation of music to persuade are addressed succinctly by Van Dorston.

4. Lester is professor of English at Arizona State University.

5. Dormon's book, The People Called Cajuns, suggests that the oft‐cited racial tolerance of Cajuns has been overstated.

6. “Coon‐ass” is a derogatory term for Cajuns, i.e. descendants of the Acadian expulsion from what is now Nova Scotia in the mid‐18th century.

7. Rockabilly was “the hybrid of blues and country that became rock & roll. It emerged from Sam Phillips' Sun Studios in Memphis…slapping string bass, twanging lead guitar, acoustic rhythm guitar—with plenty of echo while singers made astonishing yelps and gulps and hiccups and stutters” (Pareles and Romanowski 473).

8. A cogent discussion of the reasons for this departure from traditional Cajun music can be found in Bernard's authoritative Swamp Pop. Bernard is historian and curator for the McIlhenny Corporation on historic Avery Island. His help with this project was invaluable.

9. Allan's recording of “South to Louisiana” can be found on Johnnie Allan, Swamp Pop Legend: The Essential Collection CD JN 9044‐2 (Ville Platte, La.: Jin Records, 1995), #7. Johnnie Allan cites Trahan as the chief writer. “There are three names in the credits, ‘Redlich‐Trahan‐Sam.’ Sam came up with the idea of writing swamp‐pop lyrics to the tune ‘North to Alaska,’ and sent it on to Dago Redlich, who added a couple of ideas to it. Redlich then turned it over to Pee Wee Trahan, who should be credited with the majority of the lyrics.”

10. Allan includes a picture of PeeWee Trahan on 133. Buckwheat Zydeco's version can be found on Buckwheat's Zydeco Party, Rounder CD 1166‐11602‐2 (Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records Corp.), 2001, #4.

11. See FLY 516, 517, 518, and 557 especially. Flyright Records, Bexhill‐on‐Sea, East Sussex, England. Available at Master‐Trak Enterprises, 415 N. Parkerson Avenue, Crowley, Louisiana.

12. Two collections of Civil Rights era songs, both by the Smithsonian Institution, are Voices of the Civil Rights Movement and Sing for Freedom . Some of the songs, e.g., “I Told Jesus” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” reflect gospel music's contribution to the struggle for racial justice. Many of the others, such as the “Ballad of Medgar Evers,” are clearly rooted in the period of the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Neither collection contains “Strange Fruit,” the classic anti‐lynching song written by Brooklynite Abel Meeropol in 1939, first rendered by Billie Holliday and later by others, most notably Nina Simone.

13. Technically Reb Rebel Records since Rebel Records had been previously copyrighted. However, the label is most often referred to as Rebel Records, so I have chosen that usage. On each 45, the music publisher is Leber (“Rebel” backwards) Records.

14. The “attic” of Master‐Trak Enterprises contains a grand collection of the Crowley studio's production over the years. It is a must for devotees of Louisiana's swamp pop music. There is relatively little stock of the early records and many of the last recordings. The 45s in lowest supply are the Johnny Rebel recordings. Master‐Trak is now operated by J. D. Miller's son, Mark. It is a fine place to spend several hours on a balmy Louisiana winter morning, either upstairs or downstairs in the store conversing with the friendly, knowledgeable local residents who drop by. Thanks to long‐time friend Jimmy Blankenship for giving up a morning to prowl through the uncatalogued Master‐Trak Collection in search of Johnny Rebel.

15. See, for example, Woodford (38–40), Lerone Bennett, Jr. (121–24), Rogers (115), and “May Queens and Effigies” (98). By 1966, all the state colleges were desegregated, despite the best efforts of Willie Rainach and the joint legislative committee on segregation. The New Orleans school integration fiasco of 1960, caused mostly by a colossal failure of civic leadership, remained fresh in the minds of many as the direction that further “race mixing” would take.

16. This is the B‐side of “Kajun KKK.” Both written by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel.”

17. Authored by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel.” The B‐side is “Still Lookin’ for a Handout” (Reb Rebel Records #515).

18. Listed as a Johnny Rebel song, with “Move Them Niggers North” on the B‐side authored by G. Jackson. However, a listing of J. D. Miller studio recordings (Reb‐Time #1861) credits a Col. Sharecropper as the artist, and a writer listed only as Davis as the author of “Move Them Niggers North,” with a tune called “Segregation Wagon” on the A‐side. The song is on Johnny Rebel re‐releases.

19. The B‐side of “Stay Away from Dixie.” Both authored by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel.”

20. Authored by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel.”

21. Authored by James Crow, who also wrote the B‐side, “NAACP Prayer.” The Johnny Rebel website suggests that this was his song. It is on the Rebel Label (#516).

22. Authored by “C. Trahan” and J. D. Miller, sung by “Johnny Rebel.”

23. Authored by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel.”

24. Authored by “C. Trahan” and sung by “Johnny Rebel” (Reb Rebel Records #508).

25. Actually, a case can be made that the Reagan years were more of a reaction, an age of money in which corporate America made the most of patriotism, feathering its own nest while positioning its heirs for futures of continued privilege on a planet increasingly beset by overpopulation, illegal immigration, scarce resources, toxic wastes, species extinctions, and political instability. This seems to be a workable hypothesis for understanding the behavior of people in the Savings & Loan disaster, WedTech, the Pentagon's procurement scandal, the hostile takeover mania, the Superfund Scandal—paid for by the taxpayers rather than the miscreants. See Johnson (passim).

26. Written by “C. Trahan,” sung by Johnny Blaine on Viking Records #1023. The A‐side of this 45 RPM recording is “Pork and Bean Blues.” Viking Records was a label produced by Master Trak.

27. Written by G. Jackson, performed by Colonel Sharecropper. Publisher and label unknown. Provided to the author by Shane K. Bernard.

28. Written by “C. Trahan,” performed by “Johnny Rebel” (Reb Rebel Records #518).

29. See, for example, Dittmer.

30. “Stand Up and Be Counted,” performed by the White Riders. Publisher and label unknown. <http://www.officialjohnnyrebel.com> (accessed 17 Dec. 2001). The content of this site has changed over time. The theme that godless Communism was part and parcel of integrationism and other threats to Southern conservatism was quite strong in Acadiana in the 1950s and 1960s, so this naturally was appealing.

31. This Tuscaloosa, Alabama‐based publication advertised segregationist 45s (the vinyl type) and the For Segregationists Only LP at least as late as 1970. It also promoted a “Hatenanny” tape by “country music star” Odis Cochran and the Three Bigots, a Mississippi group. “When you hear these Mississippi boys a‐pickin’ and a‐grinnin’ their musical ‘hate’ and ‘prejudice,’ you'll have more fun than a nigger in a watermelon patch!” The cost was $6.00, payable to Patriot Press at a post office box in Denham Springs, Louisiana.

32. A historian knowledgeable about popular music, Silver readily remembered the popularity (“sold like hotcakes”) of Johnny Rebel records at the North Carolina State Fair. A few copies of the For Segregationists Only LP, at $30 apiece, are still available. Regrettably, there are no more original covers, but the plain‐slipped remainders are now signed by Johnny Rebel.

33. The precise extent of this music is difficult to determine. Given the aliases, sometimes made up on the spur of the moment and poorly remembered years later, confused and conflicting authorship is one issue. Given our contemporary politics of sensitivity, and perhaps given the success of more subtle appeals to prejudice, another factor is a rather natural reticence on the part of surviving participants to call attention to this earlier period in their lives when this peculiar artistry brought a certain approval and put money in their hands. Another difficulty is that there apparently were racist records made elsewhere which were not registered with BMI or ASCAP and were otherwise untraceable (see Miller). Complaining that Crowley got all the bad publicity for such records, Miller said “they don't talk about the ones coming out of Bogalusa and other places. Why don't they talk about them? Because there's no way of tracing them! On ours, we've got P.O. Box 769 Crowley, La. You can't get much closer than that.”

34. According to PeeWee Trahan, he did only one public performance, of “Lookin’ for a Handout,” in Kaplan, Louisiana, at a performance on Main Street when someone asked him to play it for a mixed crowd. The whites apparently thought it was “great,” while the black response was a good deal cooler. See Rebel (“Interview” Part IV). The location seems to have been Crowley, Louisiana, at Trahan's house.

35. At this juncture Johnny Rebel morphed into “Filthy McNasty,” a purveyor of such “adult” classics as “Everybody Was Fuckin’ But Me.” Trahan, for whom music was always a sideline, presumably put more time into his non‐musical career. See Rebel (“Lyrics”). Happy Fats continued his career, airing his right‐wing views in such songs as “Birthday Thank You Tommy from Vietnam” and “Vote Wallace in ’72.” His underground ’60s hit on the Rebel label, “Dear Mr. President,” reputedly sold over 250,000 copies, earning Fats a gold record from Jay Miller. His long career and his staunch devotion to the more traditional music of south Louisiana rightly earned him credit as “a great popularizer of Cajun music” (see Broven 44). The subsequent career of Billy Joe Norris, the “Son of Mississippi,” is unknown. His “Flight NAACP 105” was, according to Jay Miller, the best seller in the Reb Rebel series (Broven 253).

36. Daniels was raised a segregationist, but grew to admire Martin Luther King Jr.'s integrity, courage, and faith. Kemp says that the Rolling Stones and the Beatles made southern music “cool again.”

37. This is on an Anti‐Defamation League website devoted to monitoring hate groups and hate activity. See also “Bigots Who Rock” (1), the introduction to which notes that Oi! was a common Cockney greeting at the time. The remainder of the site concerns 541 hate music groups that have emerged “[s]ince the 1960s, when racist country music singer Johnny Rebel recorded songs such as ‘Nigger Hatin’ Me’.” Not all skinheads are neo‐Nazis. Some, in fact, are actively anti‐racist and have clashed with their racist counterparts (“Deafening Hate” 7).

38. White skinheads adapted Jamaican ska and bluebeat musical forms into a genre called skinhead reggae.

39. See also Dobratz and Shanks‐Meile, and Hamm.

40. Visitors can also see the cover of Brutal Attack's Tales of Glory, which suggests medieval romantic valor along with its advocacy of violence.

41. Bethune Institute for Fascist Studies website.

42. The actual music varies from airs reminiscent of punk to NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) and deathmetal. Deathmetal's heavy bass beat makes it a favorite at neo‐fascist slam dances.

43. Burdi, aka George Eric Hawthorne, was born in Toronto in 1970. By 1991, he was a lyricist and singer with RaHoWa, Canadian head of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), and a supporter of the Holocaust denial movement. “Music alone cannot save our Race, granted. But our music is precious to us, and highly effective as a recruiting tool” (see “Deafening Hate” 3; see also Lethbridge 1). Lethbridge notes that Burdi was born to wealthy parents, attended Toronto area private schools, and “became associated with Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel, and far‐right activist Paul Fromm.” He describes the Church of the Creator as “an ultra‐violent neo‐fascist organization with connections to Canada's Heritage Front and to the National Alliance, the leading Nazi organization in the USA.”

44. At the time, the ADL considered the Hillsboro, West Virginia‐based organization “the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States today.” It estimated potential annual sales of up to $1 million for Resistance Records. The Turner Diaries was one of the inspirations for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (Kim 13). Since Pierce's death in 2002, sales are reportedly a fraction of the above figure, a result of Pierce's derogatory remarks about other white supremacist groups at a National Alliance leadership conference. Poor management seems also to have been a factor. Panzerfaust, once Resistance's biggest competitor, ceased operation in 2005 when it was learned that its white supremacist proprietor, Anthony Pierpont, was of Mexican heritage.

 According to Lethbridge (1), Carto passed Resistance on to Todd Blodgett, whom he had initially hired to manage the concern. Blodgett was a staff assistant in the Reagan White House, a Republican Party strategist, an advisor to the George Bush campaign committee, and friend of many neo‐Nazis. Readers will want to take into consideration that Lethbridge's article originally appeared in the 1–15 January 2000 issue of People's Voice (New Labour Press), Canada's leading communist newspaper, published in Vancouver. However, “Deafening Hate” (5) confirms Blodgett's Republican connection and says he became active in the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens following his abortive career in hate music.

 The Resistance Records website includes a searchable database of artists and album titles. Users can listen to music clips and order by credit card. One can also listen to Resistance Radio, which provides “hatecore,” the “music of the white resistance,” and an online music catalog. Pierce believed that the racist, anti‐government message of hatecore, and its themes of rebellion and chaos, would attract younger people to the movement.

45. The winter 2000 issue of Resistance Magazine featured an interview with Matt Hale, 28‐year‐old head of the racist, anti‐Semitic World Church of the Creator (Lethbridge 2). Resistance offers a full range of right‐wing merchandise: “Besides a catalog of hundreds of racist CDs, the Resistance website offers the following material for sale: ‘The New Dawn Calendar—celebrating White women and children,’ by an ‘Aryan’ artist; the Nazi battle flag, the Nazi SS flag, the Confederate battle flag, and the Celtic Cross flag; postcards of Nazi rock bands; books by William Pierce, including the notorious Turner Diaries'—made famous by Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh—and “White Power” by George Lincoln Rockwell, the deceased leader of the American Nazi Party; posters of Hitler; a computer mouse pad with Hitler's image; and taped speeches by George Burdi, and Bob Mathews, the leader of the murderous Nazi group, The Order. The website ‘Links’ page guides viewers to the National Alliance, the David Duke organization, and to Stormfront, the largest Nazi site on the internet.” See <http://www.bethuneinstitute.org/documents/hitlerschoir.html> (accessed 17 Jan. 2002).

46. The company says that “by purchasing your CD, you're also making a contribution to the ‘Tower Fund,’ created by Mr. Guiliani [sic] to help those most directly affected by the Sept. 11th tragedy in New York City and Washington, D.C.” Aggwood refers to Johnny Rebel as “the most dangerous musical artist in America” and “the Godfather of Peckerwood Swampbilly.” See http://www.officialjohnnyrebel.com.

47. Diehard Records has relocated to Huntington, West Virginia. In addition to Resistance and Diehard, Kim lists thirteen distributors spread across the country; the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project mapped 844 active hate groups in the United States in 2006. See “Active U. S. Hate Groups in 2006.”

48. Kim notes that hate rock distributors pay individual bands for non‐exclusive rights to market their work. Thus, the most popular albums are frequently sold by multiple hate‐rock labels and new distributors can enter the market with relative ease. Thus, Micetrap is only one potential marketer of Johnny Rebel's new album.