> Johnny Rebel Speaks
>
> In the 1950s, C.J. Trahan was a young Cajun with a guitar. Now, in the
> world of hatecore and white power music, he's a living legend.
>
> By Nick Pittman
>
> C.J. Trahan says there's nothing to his story. He just recorded some
> songs, made some money and went on to other things.
>
> Seeing him on the street in Crowley, 65-year-old Trahan doesn't appear
> out of the ordinary: short, balding, dressed in jeans and a
> short-sleeve, button-down shirt. He launched his career in music like
> many others do: starting as a young Cajun man with a guitar, singing
> covers of tunes such as Rocket Morgan's "Tag Along." After a
> less-than-successful trip to Nashville, he returned home to Louisiana.
>
> Then, in the late 1960s, Trahan began to record and release music for
> the late Jay "J.D." Miller's Reb Rebel Records in Crowley. Trahan was
> now going by a new name: Johnny Rebel. His first songs were "Lookin' For
> a Handout" and "Kajun Klu [sic] Klux Klan." He followed with more
> singles, among them "Nigger, Nigger," "Some Niggers Never Die (They Just
> Smell That Way)," and "In Coontown." He set his lyrics to the twangs of
> the era's swampbilly craze, backed by a studio band.
>
> Some of his songs became local jukebox favorites, but they didn't
> receive radio play. After releasing 12 sides, Johnny Rebel's career went
> on hold. Trahan continued to play country music under a name he'd rather
> not divulge. He wrote dozens of songs for other musicians, and is
> credited as a writer on Jimmy C. Newman's hit "Lache Pas la Patate" and
> as a co-writer on Johnnie Allan's "South to Louisiana." In 1985, he
> retired from the music business. For years, he showed up to play at
> occasional benefits, and that's all.
>
> But Johnny Rebel's career is far from over. His legacy has been
> discussed in books ranging from John Broven's South to Louisiana to
> Shane K. Bernard's recent The Cajuns: The Americanization of a People.
> His work as Rebel has earned him the offer of an honorary membership in
> the Ku Klux Klan, a interview by Howard Stern, and the status as a cult
> figure among white power supporters. Fans around the world now consider
> Johnny Rebel a forefather of "hatecore" music. To them, Johnny Rebel is
> the stuff of legends.
>
> Trahan says he doesn't regret anything he has ever said or sang. He
> keeps his anonymity, he says, to protect his business and his family. He
> refuses to be photographed or perform in public as Johnny Rebel, and
> he's never given an interview about Johnny Rebel as C.J. Trahan -- until
> now.
>
> Trahan was born in Moss Bluff in 1938. After his parents divorced, he
> moved with his mother to Crowley. There, he could be found either on the
> baseball diamond or with his ears cupped to a radio, listening to
> singers such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
>
> When he was about 12 years old, his mother -- who he recalls making
> about $14 a week -- went to a jewelry store and bought a guitar for $17.
> It wasn't much, but C.J. picked up a few chords. He was a little older
> before he could afford a Gretsch guitar. "I was hitting high cotton with
> that," says Trahan, laughing about the orange axe decked out with
> gold-plated keys. About the same time, his mother purchased their first
> television set. That television and the Grand Ole Opry became his only
> guitar teachers.
>
> Trahan graduated high school in 1956 and started hanging around Miller's
> studio. At the time, some of the biggest names in blues, rhythm and
> blues, Cajun and rockabilly were laying down tracks for Miller and going
> on to bigger stardom, thanks to a deal Miller had with Excello Records.
> Talents such as Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Lonesome Sundown and Carol Fran
> all logged studio time at Miller's place. Drumming ace Warren Storm's
> "Prisoner's Song" sold a quarter of a million copies. Miller's biggest
> hit was the country weeper "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,"
> recorded by Kitty Wells.
>
> Through their mothers, Trahan and Miller were kin, but had never really
> crossed paths until Miller heard a young Trahan singing and playing atop
> a float. During the next few years, Miller groomed the boy and helped
> him with his music and songwriting. "I wrote songs, but they were
> rough," Trahan says. "[They] didn't have an idea to them, just didn't
> have that 'umph' to them."
>
> Miller had Trahan cut a few country tracks under the name Tommy Todd,
> but they never went anywhere. But Miller was able to pique the interest
> of a new record company called Todd Records, and soon Trahan was heading
> for Nashville. "I took a train to Nashville," Trahan recalls. "[I was a]
> little, shy coonass in the middle of Nashville, Tennessee, carrying a
> guitar around. You know I felt about like this." He squeezes the air
> between his thumb and index finger.
>
> Trahan recalls that he cut four sides for Todd Records and started
> palling around with Murray Nash, who wrote songs for George Morgan --
> the father of country artist Lori Morgan. Nash was helping him around
> Nashville and showing him the ropes, when he invited him to his house
> for dinner. On the menu was steak. "I had never ate a steak in my life;
> I didn't know how to eat the son of a bitch, so what I done? I sat there
> and said, 'Oh, I am just not hungry.' I was starving."
>
> Trahan recalls that he and Nash would go out and hear artists such as
> Jimmy C. Newman. Trahan says he also got to meet musician and film star
> Ferlin Husky. But from the beginning, Todd Records barely limped along.
> It died in 1964 -- and with it, Trahan's chances in Nashville were
> through. He married and got a job in Mississippi as a shipyard inspector.
>
> He also returned home to check out the happenings at Miller's studio,
> where things were changing a bit. It was the mid-1960s, and his old
> mentor had begun experimenting with a new genre: segregationist music.
>
> No historic clashes of the civil rights era occurred in southwest
> Louisiana, but tensions simmered just the same. In the mid-1950s, South
> Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) had
> integrated several black students without major incident. Efforts to
> integrate children in the area's elementary and high schools met with
> greater resistance. When the first day of school for the 1969-70 school
> year rolled around, St. Landry Parish parents protested by keeping more
> than 8,300 kids -- one-third of the school population -- out of school.
>
> In Lafayette, the federal courthouse refused to lower its flag the day
> Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. To avoid violence between
> blacks and whites, the courthouse removed the flag completely. Later
> that year, segregationist George Wallace ran for president and received
> 50 percent of the Cajun vote, compared to 13 percent nationally.
>
> In Crowley, Miller's studio had given birth to Reb Rebel Records with a
> bang. It was 1966, and Reb Rebel's first release, Happy Fats' "Dear Mr.
> President," reportedly sold more than 200,000 copies. The song mocked
> President Lyndon B. Johnson's civil rights programs, with Happy Fats
> complaining that his white coon dog won't hunt with his black bird dog,
> and finally asking, "Could I get an injunction to make them hunt
> together?" Happy Fats -- actually Leroy Leblanc of The Rayne-Bo Ramblers
> -- went on to cut a series of songs about civil rights, the Great
> Society and Vietnam. His lyrics stopped short of promoting violence
> against blacks.
>
> Reb Rebel's second release was its biggest: an Amos'n'Andy-styled skit
> by Joe Norris, under the name "The Son of Mississippi." Titled "Flight
> NAACP 105," it also reportedly sold more than 200,000 copies.
>
> When Trahan returned to the studio, Miller asked him to join him on his
> new venture. "I said, 'I don't know; I'll take it home and throw it
> around.' I did and then we got into recording it," says Trahan. "Never
> was it ever in my idea that I was going to write these types of songs,
> and I was just writing them off the feeling of the time.
>
> "It wasn't like, 'I'm gonna jump up today and write about blacks.' In
> them days, that just seemed like the natural thing to do. Well, hell, we
> did it! I did it ... he didn't entice me in any way, and he didn't try
> to influence me in any way. All the songs I wrote were my complete
> ideas. My ideas, when I got them done, I brought them to him, and he
> said, 'Let's put them down.'"
>
> Miller came up with the name Johnny Rebel in the studio. Later, Miller
> would tell writer John Broven that some of the African-American
> musicians that hung around his studio sat in on the Reb Rebel sessions,
> but Trahan says that his bands were all white. Johnny Rebel's first
> release was a 45 rpm with "Lookin' For a Handout" on the A-side and
> "Kajun Klu Klux Klan" on the other. Trahan followed with five more 45s,
> each with a B-side, bringing the complete Johnny Rebel catalog to 12
> songs. His subjects: the laziness of blacks. How blacks and whites were
> meant to be kept separate. How a black would lose a spelling bee to a
> donkey.
>
> Only two Johnny Rebel songs, "Keep a' Working Big Jim" and "Federal Aid
> (The Money Belongs to Us)," were not about race. The first was a tribute
> to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's efforts to solve the
> Kennedy assassination. The other was critical of foreign aid.
>
> Along with the 45s, Reb Rebel included four Johnny Rebel songs on a
> full-length compilation album titled For Segregationists Only. According
> to the album notes, the songs "express the feeling, anxiety, confusion
> and problems of many of our people during the political transformation
> of our way of life." If you had a taste for "subtle, rib-tickling
> satire," these songs were for you.
>
> Accounts differ on how many people heard these songs. It's likely that
> most African Americans didn't hear them at all. When Je'Nelle Chargois,
> the current president of the Lafayette chapter of the NAACP, was growing
> up in Lafayette, she never heard Johnny Rebel's music. But she says she
> knows where it came from. "[It] is an example of a type of racism that
> is embedded in this community, and it is something that has to be dealt
> with," Chargois says.
>
> Radio stations in southwest Louisiana didn't play Johnny Rebel's music,
> according to Floyd Soileau, a former disc jockey, record producer and
> owner of Ville Platte's Flat Town Music Co. "I don't think people wanted
> them that much, but I understand that in other states they sold pretty
> well," Soileau says. "I remember Miller telling me at one time that a
> lot of their sales came from certain juke joints that had them on the
> jukebox. The guy who owned the place would maybe carry a few copies to
> resell, because of the demand and that they couldn't find them just
> anywhere. They were sort of an underground trade."
>
> For his part, Trahan says that he did it for the money. "They asked me
> to do it, hell, I did it," he says. "I would do anything to make a buck.
> Hell, I made a few bucks off of it."
>
> Miller thought along the same lines, Trahan says. "In my opinion it was
> to make money. I don't know if he had a statement to make then, but at
> that time he was recording a lot of blacks. Most of his artists were
> blacks. I was big buddies with these guys. Lightning Slim, I even used
> his car one time to go on a date! That's how much blacks bothered me. As
> far as being friends, eating dinner with a guy, as long as he don't have
> a runny nose or something, I'll eat with him."
>
> Trahan insists he didn't set out to spread hate or start trouble. "I
> don't care about black. Black don't rub off. There's not a black in this
> country that has to be black. There's not a white that has to be white.
> They just came here like that. They were born that way, but they didn't
> develop the damn attitude. Whites didn't develop that attitude. Blacks
> develop an attitude towards the whites, and they won't let it go. They
> won't let go of what happened.
>
> "Why should we pay reparations for things that happened 200 years ago?"
> says Trahan. "I was run out of my country ... my ancestors were run out
> of Nova Scotia."
>
> As Johnny Rebel, Trahan says, he was just singing what was on the minds
> of everyone he knew. "At that time, there was a lot of resentment --
> whites toward blacks and blacks toward whites. So, everybody had their
> own feelings. Lots of people changed their feelings over the years. I
> basically changed my feelings over the years up to a point."
>
> Some Johnny Rebel songs, including "Kajun Klu Klux Klan" and "Nigger
> Hatin' Me," commend or suggest violence. Others are less direct. But
> that doesn't mean they aren't considered as dangerous.
>
> "I think it obviously raises the temperature," says Mark Potok, a hate
> music expert with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
> "Typically, it causes a reaction. Sometimes a reaction is as ugly as the
> action. It seems to me, obviously, that the danger is that at some point
> it breaks out into violence.
>
> "I shouldn't say that is the only danger ... words hurt. These are not
> pleasant things to be saying about people, and one has to remember it's
> not only the people who he saw as his enemies who hear these words but
> 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old kids who are being kind of bombarded with
> personal hatred. I think that kind of stuff stays with people."
>
> Potok says the most effective tool to recruit teens to white power
> groups is the appeal of members of the opposite sex. After that, he
> says, it's music. "I have heard from so many people who have come out
> and said that the music really did have an effect on them," he says. "A
> typical 17-year-old doesn't know why he is so unhappy with the world but
> is looking for something."
>
> In the years since the Johnny Rebel sessions, his message has
> proliferated to groups throughout the world. "Since the 1960s, when
> racist country singer Johnny Rebel recorded songs such as "N-- Hatin'
> Me," more than 500 hate rock bands have formed worldwide," reports the
> Anti-Defamation League in its report Bigots Who Rock: An ADL List of
> Hate Music Groups. Most of these groups formed after the British band
> Skrewdriver turned to delivering hate-filled messages in 1982. In the
> United States, bands go by inconspicuous names like Red, White & Blue or
> venomous monikers like Jew Slaughter. An annual white power music
> festival usually takes place in Bremen, Ga. -- it was moved to an
> undisclosed location in the Jacksonville, Fla., area this year, the ADL
> reports.
>
> Trahan says he never performed as Rebel -- except once. He was in the
> town of Kaplan, playing country music, when someone in the crowd
> requested a Rebel song. He looked out to make sure there weren't any
> blacks in the audience. Then he obliged.
>
> In time, Trahan says, he largely forgot about Johnny Rebel and his 12
> songs. J.D. Miller died in 1996, but his sons, Mark and Mike Miller,
> have taken up his operations. In the 1980s, the Crowley studio gained
> fame as the site where Paul Simon recorded a track for his album
> Graceland. Otherwise, things generally have quieted down.
>
> Then, sometime around early 2001, a Johnny Rebel fan named Brad Herman
> noticed the studio address printed on the back of his old For
> Segregationists Only album, and he set out on a pilgrimage. At the
> studio, Trahan says, Herman bought the old 45s for a modest price.
> (Herman could not be located for this story. Mark and Mike Miller
> declined comment and asked this reporter to leave their Modern Music
> Center store in Crowley.) On the Internet, the Rebel 45s were selling
> for upwards of $60. The studio even offered to put Herman in touch with
> Johnny Rebel himself for a few autographs, Trahan says.
>
> Trahan learned from Herman that Johnny Rebel's career was still alive,
> thanks to bootlegging and the Internet. "I can't believe it! If I was
> getting money off of it, it probably wouldn't be bad," Trahan says. "It
> knocks me out to know some of this stuff. Why is it so popular? And it's
> popular in Europe and all over the place."
>
> Trahan hired Herman as his manager, and they devised a plan to cut into
> the viable Johnny Rebel market. They released a CD of the old sides,
> splitting up the tracks with excerpts from an interview with Johnny
> Rebel himself. Herman began selling the CD on an official Web site
> complete with Rebel's bio, song lyrics and complete discography. After
> the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Trahan recorded and released a
> new song titled "Infidel Anthem," describing the whipping America should
> lay on Osama bin Laden. Herman booked Trahan on the Howard Stern Show.
> Trahan promoted the new song and played a few of the old tracks from the
> compilation album.
>
> Trahan says that Stern and Herman also talked him into cutting a new,
> expletive-laden version of "Infidel Anthem." Trahan says he regrets both
> the new version's vulgarity and a backing track that was added to the
> original song.
>
> After the Stern interview, Trahan says, Herman could barely keep up with
> orders coming in for Johnny Rebel's music. Trahan has since broken ties
> with Herman, stating that he has been unable to reach him in five months
> and that Herman owes him money. He is now in league with Johnny Ells, a
> Greensburg, Penn.-based disc jockey who features his music and
> interviews on his online radio show. Ells has posted a new Web site to
> market Johnny Rebel. The site also features Ku Klux Klan insignia and
> art, despite the fact that Trahan, a Catholic, disapproves of the Klan.
>
> Among the sites now selling bootlegged Johnny Rebel music is
> whitepowerrecords.com, which lists a CD titled Klassic Klan
> Kompositions. The site is a branch of Condor Legion Ordnance (CLO), a
> corporation avowedly dedicated to the survival of the white race. Victor
> Gephard, a lawyer who runs the CLO site, says that he has the right to
> sell the records because no one is clear who owns the copyrights to the
> material. He also says he doubts whether or not Trahan is the real
> Johnny Rebel, stating that some songs sound different vocally from
> others. "If he is really Johnny Rebel, he got a raw deal," Gephard says,
> adding that if managed and properly represented by attorneys, the real
> Johnny Rebel should be worth millions.
>
> Gephard says that when Herman contacted him via email and ordered him to
> stop selling Klassic Klan Kompositions, Gephard laughed it off. They
> disputed the copyrights and the album remains listed on the site.
> Bootlegging is especially common among white power groups, Gephard says,
> adding that it is nearly impossible to buy an album by Skrewdriver that
> is not bootlegged.
>
> Gephard says he got into the Johnny Rebel game while he was working for
> Resistance Records, a Web site that sells white power music and other
> merchandise. Gephard had purchased about 20 of the CDs for $7 apiece and
> began selling them on eBay for $20 each. Realizing the profit he could
> make, he bought scores more. The next day eBay banned him and the sale
> of the discs. Gephard tried to re-enter them as "horrible" music, but
> the site's administrators quickly caught on and banned him again. To
> move the discs, he set up his own shop and began offering the CDs. He
> says that he has moved most of the 200 to 300 discs he bought. The real
> mover of the recordings, he says, is Resistance Records.
>
> Resistance is the largest distributor of white power music. National
> Alliance leader William Pierce -- the author of the underground hate
> classic The Turner Diaries -- purchased the company in 1999 and has
> built up to an estimated annual sales of $1 million, says ADL. The
> Resistance Web site lists Johnny Rebel's Klassic Klan Kompositions as
> its no. 2 seller, right after the top-selling video game Ethnic Cleansing.
>
> Resistance adamantly claims that it owns the rights to everything that
> it sells. When asked about Rebel, Resistance spokesperson David Pringle
> initially said he was perplexed by Trahan's claim to be the singer. He
> promised to obtain the official source of the record rights. After a
> week had passed without hearing from Pringle, a phone call to his office
> revealed that Resistance is now offering "no comment" on the issue.
>
> Meanwhile, Gephard says that the research he conducted on the material
> while employed at Resistance indicates that the company received the
> copyright for the CDs from Johnny Rebel's widow. The rumor doesn't
> surprise Trahan. He's heard many times over that he is a dead man. He
> also says that whenever someone releases a song about segregation or
> blacks, his name is instantly associated with it.
>
> "Look, there's been rumors circulating for years that I got shot in a
> goddamn war with the FBI," Trahan says. "So much of this crap goes
> around, you know. It's a bunch of lies out there, then there's some
> truth. I don't even know."
>
> Among the lies that Trahan cites are rumors that he's still making
> music. But Ells' site, www.definitivejohnnyrebel.com, has been promoting
> the release of a new Johnny Rebel CD. Titled It's the Attitude, Stupid!,
> the CD includes new songs such as "Send Them All Back to Africa."
>
> Apparently, for both C.J. Trahan and Johnny Rebel, the last song has yet
> to be sung.
>
> Nick Pittman is a Lafayette-based writer. He can be contacted by
> email at ngp ittman@hotmail.com