Johnny Rebel (singer)

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The cover of a Johnny Rebel album.
The cover of a Johnny Rebel album.

Johnny Rebel is the pseudonym of Cajun/country musician Clifford Joseph "Pee Wee" Trahan (born 1938). Trahan has used this pseudonym most notably on racist recordings issued in the 1960s on J. D. "Jay" Miller's Reb Rebel label of Crowley, Louisiana.[1]

His songs frequently use the racial epithet nigger and often voice sympathy for Jim Crow-era segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. Nearly all his songs serve as platforms for denigrating African Americans and the civil rights movement.[2]

Trahan first recorded under the Johnny Rebel moniker in the mid-1960s, when the civil rights movement and black empowerment movement reached their zeniths. He employed J. D. "Jay" Miller's recording studio in Crowley, Louisiana. Miller, in fact, produced the sessions and issued the recordings on his own Reb Rebel label.[3]

Trahan's first release — the fifth for the Reb Rebel label — was a 45 RPM single of "Lookin' For A Handout" and "Kajun Ku Klux Klan." He would record five more singles for the label, which included "Nigger, Nigger," "In Coon Town," "Who Likes A Nigger," "Nigger Hatin Me," "Still Looking For A Handout," "Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)," "Stay Away From Dixie,", and "Move Them Niggers North."[4]

At least two of Trahan's songs, "Keep A Workin' Big Jim" and "(Federal Aid Hell!) The Money Belongs To Us," were not about race, but about political issues — namely, the efforts of Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison to solve the Kennedy assassination and U.S. monetary assistance to foreign countries. [5]

Many of these singles were eventually issued in album format by Reb Records under the title "For Segregationalists Only". [6]

Trahan has never allowed himself to be photographed by anyone other than close friends and family, though he claims there are indeed images of him on the Internet. He says he has no idea where those photos originated. [7]

Despite his racist songs, Trahan claims that he is not a racist and that some of his friends are black. Trahan also claims to disapprove of the Klan (probably because of its anti-Catholic bias), to which he has frequently been offered membership.[citation needed]

After a hiatus of about three decades, Trahan returned as Johnny Rebel in 2001 when he issued his CD single "Infidel Anthem," recorded in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.[8]

In 2003 Trahan released the album It's The Attitude, Stupid!, on the Try It Man record label. At least two persons or entities, including one affiliated with racist and hate groups, claim ownership of the Johnny Rebel catalog. At present, however, it is unclear who actually owns the recordings.[9]

Johnny Rebel's songs have been covered by other singers such as Big Reb and the German band Landser.[citation needed]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ John Broven, South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous (Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1983), pp. 252-53; Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), pp. 63-64.
  2. ^ Ibid.
  3. ^ Ibid.
  4. ^ Ibid.
  5. ^ Nick Pittman, "Johnny Rebel Speaks," newspaper article originally published in the Lafayette, Louisiana, Times of Acadiana (a Gannett weekly), ca. 2000.
  6. ^ Broven, South to Louisiana, p. 252.
  7. ^ Pittman, "Johnny Rebel Speaks."
  8. ^ Ibid.
  9. ^ Ibid.

[edit] References

    • John Broven, South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous (Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1983).
    • Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2003).

    [edit] External links

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