THE SONGS OF JOHN D. LOUDERMILK

2 MORE ORIGINALS FROM 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 George Hamilton IV 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 Colonial label in North Carolina. The best and most successful of these was "Sittin' in the Balcony," which made the Top 40 in 1957. Eddie Cochran'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 Columbia in 1958, and also decided to concentrate on songwriting when he relocated to Nashville, eventually working for Chet Atkins at RCA. In the late '50s and early '60s, he supplied material for country stars, teen idols, and pop/rock singers, including "Waterloo" (Stonewall Jackson), "Angela Jones" (Johnny Ferguson), "Ebony Eyes" (the Everly Brothers), "Norman" (Sue Thompson), and "Abilene" (George Hamilton IV). In the mid-'60s, he was briefly in vogue in Britain: the Nashville Teens did both "Tobacco Road" and "Google Eyes" (the latter of which was a hit in the U.K., though a flop stateside), and Marianne Faithfull 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 Paul Revere & the Raiders in 1971 (it had previously been a hit for British singer Don Fardon). 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)

The eye-catching psychedelic art on the cover of 1969's "The Open Mind of J.D. Loudermilk" is more tongue-in-cheek than a reflection of the music within. Loudermilk, one of the greatest Nashville songwriters of the late '50s and early '60s, seemed to believe that this album would blow the lid off the music world, but it is not nearly as controversial as he suggests in the liner notes. A mixture of conservative and progressive political views, the songs blast the "new morality," the drug culture, and accuse peace protesters of killing policemen. "Goin' to Hell on a Sled" is the most overtly political cut on the album, but "The Jones" critiques Madison Avenue materialism and keeping up with "the Joneses," "Poor Little Pretty Girl" takes a swipe at the objectification of women, and "Brown Girl" looks at interracial romance. Other songs, such as "Nassau Town," are pretty folk-pop ditties of the sort more commonly associated with Loudermilk. (Greg Adams in AllMusic)

LOUDERMILK'S FIRST ALBUMS (1961/1962)

When Frank Zappa parodies doo wop, or when Lee Hazlewood makes odd amalgams of country and pop, it's funny because there are indications that these guys are aware that they're deconstructing established idioms. Loudermilk is like Zappa and Hazlewood, except he's not funny, just banal, and it's not clear whether these lightweight country-pop/rock ditties are tongue in cheek or simply the work of a hack who can't do any better. The songs are clichés, except that Loudermilk will throw in things to arouse suspicion that he's cranking these out as sort of an in joke. What to make of a line like "since Dad's been laid off work, Mary's no longer mine," in a song ("Mary's No Longer Mine") bemoaning the narrator's lack of access to his Dad's car to take Mary out, delivered with all the emotion of a demo singer (which Loudermilk was)? Hardly the usual stuff of 1960s country and pop, and hardly likely to be covered by someone to bring in royalties, so what was the point? The high point of the record is "Two Strangers in Love," very much in the style of the Everly Brothers (who covered Loudermilk's "Ebony Eyes" for a hit); one wouldn't be surprised if it turned out it was submitted to the duo for consideration.

Although this contains some of Loudermilk's own versions of some of his most famous songs, it's a surprisingly disposable effort. The production is period Nashville pop-lite, Loudermilk's voice is almost devoid of character, and the songs themselves are usually downright dippy in their slightness. Much of this is Loudermilk at his worst - chipper, mindless romantic trifles, or trivial tunes about characters who are, one would guess, supposed to be laughably eccentric, though the results are about as funny as your average prime-time sitcom. Includes versions of "Angela Jones," "Google Eye," and "This Little Bird" (here titled, for some reason, "The Little Bird"), all of which were big hits in the hands of others. Beware, though - the version of "Tobacco Road" here is not the original, basic thumper on Loudermilk's 1960 Columbia single, but a vastly inferior remake with an inappopriately jaunty arrangement. (Richie Unterberger in AllMusic)