Paul Revere & The Raiders - Indian Reservation:
John D. Loudermilk: The Story Behind “Indian Reservation” on the “Viva! NashVegas® Radio Show”
A well-known story surrounding one of Loudermilk’s songs is that, when he was asked by the Viva! NashVegas radio show about the origins of the Raiders’ hit song “Indian Reservation,” he fabricated the story that he wrote the song after his car was snowed in by a blizzard and he was taken in by Cherokee Indians. A self-professed prankster, he spun the tale that a Cherokee chieftain, “Bloody Bear Tooth” asked him to make a song about his people’s plight and the Trail of Tears, even going so far as to claim that he had later been awarded “the first medal of the Cherokee Nation”, not for writing the song, but for his “blood”; further fabricating that his “great-great grandparents, Homer and Matilda Loudermilk” were listed on the Dawes Rolls. Had this tall tale been true, he would have been a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, which he was not.
John Loudermilk also wrote Tobacco Road