Anyone else remember the song, Indian Reservation, by Paul Revere and The Raiders? It isn’t a particularly good song, and it’s old, from 1971. Unfortunately, it’s burned into my brain because it seemed like every day when I was in middle school that thing got played on the school bus. The earworm got revived this morning because Ruben Bolling had to stir up old memories, and then teach me that the musicians were assholes.
And just about every time the song was played on the countdown of the internationally syndicated radio show, “American Top 40,” host Casey Kasem would recount, with varying degrees of detail, the “incredible” story behind its writing.
Kasem would describe how songwriter John D. Loudermilk got caught in a snowstorm while driving in North Carolina, and was captured by Native Americans of the Cherokee Nation. They destroyed his car, and then tortured him, “such as piercing his spine with needles,” for days. When the Native Americans found out he was a “respected songwriter,” they said they’d only release him if he promised to write a song about the injustices inflicted on Native American people. When he refused, the painful torture increased and he realized he would be killed if he didn’t comply. So he promised he would write the song. They released him, and he lived up to his word by writing the song that would become a #1 hit.
It was a lie. An improbable, unbelievable, racist lie. He later admitted that he made it all up. Also, how gullible was Casey Kasem?
So now I’ve got an annoying earworm that, every time it wriggles around in my brain, also makes me want to snarl, “Fuck you, Loudermilk.” I really would rather not remember middle school.
I too remember Casey Kasem telling that story. It was unbelievable and offensive. And the song was insipid musically – it was the typical white man’s Indian music sound of that era, straight out of some B western. But without that, the song would not have charted.
The lyrics reeked of noble savage memes: ‘so proud to live; so proud to die’, as well as an ending that tried to assuage white man’s guilt with false hope: ‘maybe some day when they learn; Cherokee nation will return’. Sure, right after the apocalypse.
The worst song Paul Revere & The Raiders ever recorded becomes their biggest hit. Funny how that happens.
Ewww, that is one noxious backstory.
This might be a good time to plug Reservation Dogs, one of the most fantastic series I’ve seen in years, and worth the price of a Hulu subscription all by itself. (But you also get The Handmaid’s Tale, etc.)
One thing that strikes me, is that the story is so ridiculous, you have to be an American journalist to believe it. He was clearly trolling.
Casey basically read whatever was put in front of him, he was “fooled” numerous times during AT40’s run. One of my favorites is the time he told the tragic story of an R&B singer who burnt his face while working at McDonald’s and became a rapper wearing a mask. The sad story of Humpty Hump. The truth? Humpty was just the other rapper in the group (Shock G) wearing a damn Groucho mask. None of that was even vaguely true.
Oh, and according to Loudermilk, the reason he made the story up was because it was midnight when the AT40 researchers called him and he was pissed they woke him up. He didn’t actually think they’d believe that.
Here’s the Wikipedia version of the story:
So, it was a lie or a prank. I’m not sure the “prank” angle makes it better. One of the citations [7] is to the original Viva! NashVegas broadcast where Loudermilk spun the tale per this version. The other is Loudermilk’s obituary in the Guardian. Of course, the Wikipedia story may be a cover up as well. Great thing about pranking is there’s potentially no end to it.
I wonder how Casey Kasem would handle the Noem’s dog incident:
Casey Kasem’s moral outrage over offensive racial stereotypes only applied to Arabs and Arab-Americans. What a shock.
Fight an earworm with music.
Also by white people:
Maybe listen to any version of Jim Pepper’s “Witchi-Tai-To” to chase it away? Also indian-themed and about the same era.
https://oldtimemusic.com/w3/the-meaning-behind-the-song-witchi-tai-to-by-brewer-shipley/
@ 8
I think he’d say “Zoinks!”
If there were any justice in this world, Casey Kasem never would have had a crappy Top 40 show and the entire world would know that Link Wray was a incredible musician and Shawnee, and not just some footnote.
https://youtu.be/KFCpUZVyXgg?si=3S_ZSrTz1T_g3kcE
I remember the song, the stupid costumes the band wore, but I had never heard that ridiculous origin story. How dumb must one be to think any of it was true. Racial insensitivity aside, the song is as bad as the story. As bad as believing the Monkees were an actual band, that a group of cartoon characters sang Sugar, Sugar, or that a group of white LA studio musicians were a Mexican band led by Herb Albert.
Another good anti-colonial song here – Kev Carmody – Thou shalt not steal with lyrics. Then there’s the Yothu Yindi Aussie classic Treaty (Original Version) – here Oh, and one of my all time fave songs and videoclips – or rather fusion of two songs here – Midnight Oil & Warumpi Band – Blackfella/Whitefella / The Dead Heart (Blackfella/Whitefella / 1986.)
@ 15 StevoR
Speaking of white guilt, I was always partial to Paul Kelly’s From Little Things Big Things Grow.
A “true story”
Gough Whitlam Vincent Lingiari – YouTube
@8 I only remember the Negativland cover “Still haven’t found what I was looking for.
https://youtu.be/ID6Z-OFne24?si=–nAuA2ujLBqpi2N
Random fact: Casey Kasem refused to reprise his role of Shaggy in Scooby-Doo until Hanna Barbera made the character vegetarian., like himself. I’ve always found that more than a little odd, since Shaggy would scarf pepperoni pizza and burgers in the ’70s and ’80s, so I don’t know.
@9: Put it that way and it does sound fairly hypocritical. That’s the reason why he quit Transformers back in the 1980s and I remember how upset he was about Disney’s Aladdin back in the 1990s.
Poor Loudermilk an accomplished song writter and this is the song that you are most famous for.