The title of today’s post is to clarify that is not about the excellent recovery sit-com (2017-2020) starring Ron Livingston and my man Mat Fraser. Though it would be very hip to learn that co-creators Peter Farrelly and Bobby Mort named their Loudermilk after these other real-life Loudermilks.
Ira Loudermilk (1924-1965) was born 100 hundred years ago today. With his younger brother Charlie (1927-2011) the Alabama Baptist formed the Louvin Brothers, a close harmony duo that sang a country/bluegrass/ gospel repertoire in a vein that reminds me of the Everlies. Their recording career began in 1955. Ira played mandolin and sang tenor; Charlie played guitar and sang the lower part. They had a dozen hit singles on the country charts and recorded upwards of three dozen albums, the best known of which, pictured above, is Satan is Real (1959). Their songs were mostly about sin and hellfire. And they knew whereof they spoke. Despite his Christian preachifying, Ira was a particular hellion, known for his boozing, womanizing, and brawling. His third wife (of four) shot him six times after he tried to strangle her with a phone cord. He finally learned of Satan’s reality in a drunk driving accident at age 41.
But the main Loudermilk I wanted to celebrate was their cousin, John D. Loudermilk, sometimes billed as J.D. Loudermilk (1934-2016). The native North Carolinian was also a recording artist, but he achieved his biggest success as a songwriter. His best known tune is one of the favorite songs of my youth “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)”, a #1 hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1971. For years Loudermilk gave out that a Cherokee chief named “Bloody Bear Tooth” rescued him from a snowed-in car on a country lane one evening, and convinced him to write this song about the Trail of Tears. It was both bunkum and hokum, but benign enough in that it makes its hearers sympathetic to the plight of Native Americans, in a vague, sentimental way.
Loudermilk’s second best known song is surely the pissed-off garage rock classic “Tobacco Road”, a hit for the Nashville Teens (a British band!) in 1964. His other notable songs include Eddie Cochran’s first hit “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957); “Ebony Eyes”, a #8 hit for the Everly Brothers in 1961; and “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye”, a #6 hit for the Casinos in 1967. His songs were covered by Marianne Faithfull, Glen Campbell, Skeeter Davis, Tracey Ullman, The Blues Magoos, The Box Tops, Roy Orbison, Moon Mullican, and dozens of others.
For more on show business history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.
(Travalanche) 
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