The Musical Odyssey of Johnny Rebel

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At the height of the battle over integration in the American South, a young musician from Louisiana’s Cajun country picked up a microphone and shocked listeners with bold and inflammatory musical appeals to maintain the separation of the races. His songs ridiculed President Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, and almost every conceivable attribute of blacks, from their appearance and their work ethic, to their spending habits, to the way they smelled. He made liberal use of racial slurs, especially “nigger”, and celebrated the Ku Klux Klan. He recorded this type of music under the name “Johnny Rebel”, though he sang much less controversial music under several other names.

Johnny Rebel’s tunes were catchy and upbeat, and his lyrics can be described as either horrifying or hilarious, depending on who you ask. Part of the appeal can be explained by his high and friendly-sounding voice, which didn’t seem to fit with the insulting things that he sang. For example, here are the words to one of his early offerings.

Other hits from the Johnny Rebel repertoire include “Coon Town”, “Stay Away from Dixie”, and “Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way.)” The singer’s work was memorable, but his career as Johnny Rebel seemed destined to be short-lived. After recording twelve songs between 1966 and 1970, Mr. Rebel went radio silent. Eventually, these largely forgotten songs exploded in popularity with the arrival of the internet. As a new century dawned, Johnny Rebel unexpectedly came out of retirement and released a new album, “It’s the Attitude, Stupid!” Today, songs from Johnny Rebel’s earlier and later eras both routinely draw tens of thousands of views on YouTube, though they are often banned and re-uploaded. I am not aware of any other American racialist musician who has acquired a similarly large fanbase.

For three decades, Johnny Rebel’s identity remained a mystery. Thousands loved the music, but few knew anything about the person who created it. Who was this man? And did he record these songs solely for the money, or was his music representative of his true beliefs?

Act One: The Origins of Johnny Rebel

Johnny Rebel’s real name was Clifford Joseph Trahan. Born in 1938 in Moss Bluff, Louisiana, Trahan came of age in nearby Crowley, the largest community in Acadia Parish. The parish is named for the heritage of many of its settlers, the Acadians, now commonly known as Cajuns. These were ethnically French colonists who were expelled from parts of Eastern Canada by the British in the mid-eighteenth century. Some then moved to southern Louisiana, then under French rule. Trahan could trace his own ancestry to these Louisiana French migrants.

Trahan’s musical ambitions were noticed by a relative, record producer Jay Miller. At first, Trahan recorded country songs under the stage names “Tommy Todd” “Jericho Jones”, “Pee Wee Trahan”, and “Johnny Blaine.” Those songs were not commercially successful enough to allow Trahan to have a full-time career in the music business, so the singer went to work at a shipyard in Mississippi. However, Miller would found Reb Rebel Records, which specialized in pro-segregation music, and he recruited Trahan to write and record songs for the label under the moniker “Johnny Rebel.” Trahan sang a dozen different songs for Miller and Reb Rebel. Ten of these were about race, and two addressed other topics. “Federal Aid” criticized government spending, and “Keep A Workin’ Big Jim” promoted the efforts of New Orleans attorney Jim Garrison to investigate the Kennedy Assassination.

From “Federal Aid”:

I read in the papers, in real big print,
about a sugarcoated speech made by our president.
With federal aid he thinks he’ll win our trust,
but federal aid, hell, the money belongs to us.

He puts taxes on this, taxes on that,
just any kind of tax to keep the government fat.
He says he’s gonna give us federal aid or bust,
but federal aid, hell, the money belongs to us.

From “Keep A Workin’ Big Jim:

Keep a-workin’ Big Jim
We wanna know the truth.
Keep a-workin’ Big Jim
The nation’s watching you.

Now wouldn’t it be something if the Warren Report
Turned out to be just a lie
And one big man who was working all alone
Found the answers and the reasons why?

Two Johnny Rebel songs were included on Reb Rebel’s 1971 compilation album For Segregationists Only. These were “Kajun Ku Klux Klan” and “Looking for a Handout.” “Kajun Ku Klux Klan” tells the fictional tale of a black man named “Levi Coon” who, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, tries to order a meal at what was previously a whites-only cafe. The white waitress will not serve him, and Levi will not leave no matter what she says, so she decides to alert the local chapter of the Klan. “Looking for a Handout” mocks blacks who participate in welfare programs, claiming that “the only reason they go to school is so that they can learn to sign their names when they become members of the welfare line.”

The tunes released under the Reb Rebel label were intentionally shocking and not meant to be taken too seriously. They were often too vulgar to be played on the radio. Mainstream audiences might have found them funny, but for most, it would have been socially unacceptable to admit that they were funny. Other Reb Rebel artists were Happy Fats (Cajun singer Leroy LeBlanc) and the Son of Mississippi (Joe Norris) The height of LeBlanc’s fame came decades earlier, as he was an influential figure in the popularization of Cajun music before the Second World War. Later, in addition to work with Miller and Reb Rebel, LeBlanc was a supporter of George Wallace’s presidential campaigns.

The label did not release any new songs after 1971, but Trahan continued to perform his non-political music at local gigs in Louisiana. He would also go on to write “Lâche pas la Patate”, a Cajun French song that became a hit for fellow Cajun country singer Jimmy C. Newman. Though Trahan never achieved stardom for his other music, he did have a fine singing voice. His musical output was prolific, and I have done my best to listen to as many of his recordings as I can find. My favorites are “Lonely Street to Hell”, “Cajun Man Can”, “Save Your Loving for Sis” and “Play That Song One More Time.” Trahan certainly can’t compare to contemporaries like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, or Waylon Jennings, but he had undeniable musical talent.

Act Two: Johnny’s Return

For the most part, “Johnny Rebel” kept his identity a secret in the following decades, which was easier to do in the pre-internet days than it would be now. When his music became popular again, Trahan agreed to sit down for two interviews about his past as Johnny Rebel. The first was conducted on-air with famed radio host Howard Stern, who, like Johnny Rebel, was notorious for vulgarity and shock comedy. Stern interviewed him as “Johnny Rebel” and not as Clifford Trahan. The second was with Nick Pittman of The Advocate, a newspaper based in Louisiana’s capital city of Baton Rouge. Trahan gave this interview using his real name.

 According to Pittman, the man most responsible for Johnny Rebel’s return to the studio was Brad Herman, a longtime fan who paid a visit to the sons of the now-deceased Jay Miller in the hopes of tracking down the mysterious artist. Before meeting Herman, Trahan was unaware that he had so many new fans:

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 agreed to write segregationist music for Jay Miller because he thought it would be profitable, telling Pittman “I would do anything to make a buck. Hell, I made a few bucks off of it.” Apparently sensing a new financial opportunity, Trahan hired Herman as his manager and re-released the twelve original Johnny Rebel songs along with some new commentary on a 2001 CD with the title If You Can… Try It Man! After the September 11 attacks, Trahan, as Johnny Rebel, released his “Infidel Anthem”, a song about capturing and hanging Osama bin Laden. This was the first new Johnny Rebel track to become available more than three decades

A few years before Herman came into contact with Trahan, Howard Stern had discovered Johnny Rebel’s music and had played some of the songs on his show. However, Stern misattributed the songs to country singer David Allan Coe, who is notorious for using racial slurs in a few of his songs. Coe appeared on Stern’s program to explain that he did not record the Johnny Rebel songs, and his website still includes a page explaining that Trahan, and not Coe, is the real Johnny Rebel. Recognizing Stern’s interest in Trahan’s music, Herman was able to book an interview for his client on Stern’s show. During his conversation with Stern, Trahan confirmed that he was in the process of writing several new Johnny Rebel songs.

Trahan had a falling out with Herman at some point between his appearance on Stern’s program and his June 2003 interview with Pittman. This did not stop him from releasing It’s the Attitude, Stupid! before the end of that year. The second Johnny Rebel album contained songs with titles such as “Affirmative Action”, “Reparations”, and “Send ‘Em all Back to Africa.” While his music from the 1960s was centered around opposing integration, the new album focused on the attitudes and behavior of blacks toward whites. He explained his thinking this way during his interview with Pittman:

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?

In the album’s titular song, Trahan attempts to explain to blacks the reasons for his continuing resentment. He emphasizes that it has little to do with their appearance, clothing, or manner of speaking, but rather:

It’s the attitude stupid
It’s what’s inside your brain
It’s the attitude stupid
Ain’t you ever gonna change
You keep thinkin’ everything
Is black and white
Don’t you know the difference
‘Tween wrong and right
It’s the attitude stupid
We don’t owe you a thing.

Trahan is annoyed by black activists who make spurious accusations of anti-black racism. To illustrate this point, he singles out minister and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. In the song “Jesse Showed Up” the preacher incites a riot on behalf of a black criminal who is caught robbing a grocery store, but his antics are thwarted by the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan. I’m sure hearing about this song must have been unpleasant for Reverend Jackson, if he is even aware of it, but I can’t say I feel too bad for him. When black stripper Crystal Mangum accused three white Duke University lacrosse players of raping her, Jackson pledged to pay her college tuition even if she was found to have made the whole story up (as you may have guessed, she did make it up).

In “Send “Em All Back to Africa”, black complaints again come under scrutiny:

They want their way, there ain’t no doubt
They just keep pushin’, they never stop
They don’t like the way things are done
They oughta go back to where they come from.

This is also a theme in his song “Reparations.” As a descendant of Frenchmen who were expelled from their homes in Canada, Trahan feels extreme contempt toward the idea that he should be obligated to compensate the descendants of African slaves in America:

You say all your ancestors were slaves
And that’s the reason that you ought to get paid
You want something for nothing,
you monkeys are all the same
You’re putting all of the blame on the whites
We violated your civil rights
But your civil rights movement is nothing but a shakedown game.

There is also a song dedicated to affirmative action initiatives, which are, predictably, another pet peeve of Trahan’s. Johnny Rebel songs often follow a simple formula: blacks behave poorly, whites begrudgingly accept it for a while, whites eventually react and put a stop to the black behavior in question. The “white reaction” typically arrives in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. However, in “Affirmative Action” Trahan encourages whites to adopt the same tactics as blacks and demand an end to these programs through public protest. A few humorous verses about white getting passed over for jobs in favor of less qualified blacks introduce the problem, but then Johnny Rebel starts speaking directly to white listeners:

Now we’ve gotta stop what’s happening to you and me.
The feds have got to listen
and I’m sure you’ll agree
We need to get their attention
and make them understand
I’ve been thinking about it lately
and I got a plan.

His solution is not for whites to dress up in white robes and burn crosses, but to instead

Go out in the street.
And demonstrate
and raise some hell
to everyone we meet
We’ll stop taking all this crap that we have in the past.
And tell Uncle Sam to stick the affirmative action up his ass.

Throughout It’s the Attitude, Stupid! Trahan appears to be open to the possibility that blacks and whites could get along if blacks were to modify their behavior. However, he is adamant that whites will not go along with the status quo indefinitely.

Trahan’s Views on Race

Clifford Trahan may have recorded Johnny Rebel songs just “to make a buck” but it is not as though Johnny’s support for segregation was all an act. He offered this explanation to Pittman:

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.

One thing that did not change was Trahan’s disapproval of miscegenation. He made clear to Howard Stern that he would never consider sleeping with a black woman, nor would he want his daughter to marry a black man. Perhaps he could make peace with some form of integration, but race-mixing was out of the question.

At the same time, Trahan denied being a “racist” despite Stern’s objections. He insisted that he had several black friends, got along fine with blacks in his day-to-day life, and did not condone violence against blacks or any other race. Interestingly, while Stern and his co-hosts used slurs incessantly throughout the half-hour-long conversation, Trahan avoided doing so except when referring to the titles of his songs.

As for the non-racial material in the songs, it seems fair to presume that Johnny Rebel’s fiscal conservatism and dislike of publicly funded welfare programs were a genuine reflection of Trahan’s personal political views. The skepticism of the Warren Commission Report expressed in “Keep A Workin’ Big Jim” suggests a general distrust of government. At the same time, Trahan identifies strongly with the United States and was an enthusiastic proponent of America’s entry into the Afghan War. Even though the “Johnny Rebel” name alludes to the Confederacy, nowhere in his music does Trahan call for the South to attempt secession a second time.

Alabama Governor George Wallace’s third-party campaign carried Louisiana in 1968, and Pittman noted that half of all Cajuns voted the Wallace ticket. Additionally, a remarkably Johnny Rebel-like candidate, former Klansman David Duke, was the Republican nominee for one of Louisiana’s Senate seats in 1990, and for governor in 1991. Duke gained notoriety as a college student for wearing a swastika armband to a speech given by left-wing Jewish attorney William Kunstler. Duke’s stunt, which was itself inspired by the activism of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, coincided with Trahan’s days recording for Miller’s Reb Rebel label. To draw attention to his cause, Rockwell often relied on humor and his ability to shock and outrage audiences, the very same methods employed by Johnny Rebel.

Trahan very likely voted for Wallace in 1968 and for Duke in 1990 and 1991. Trahan was remarkable because he possessed an excellent singing voice, and could write catchy, clever songs. However, his politics, including his views relating to race, seem rather unremarkable for a white Louisianan born in 1938. There are plenty of older whites alive today, in the South and elsewhere, who want to limit welfare programs, support an aggressive foreign policy abroad despite being open to “conspiracy theories” about events like the Kennedy assassination, and remain uncomfortable with race-mixing; they just can’t sing like Trahan could.

The Boondocks and Jimmy Rebel

Considering that Clifford Trahan had (or at least claimed to have had) black friends, it is perhaps fair to wonder if Johnny Rebel had any black fans. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, then the answer is a resounding “yes.” The Boondocks, an animated comedy series about a black family living in a white suburb, features an entire episode centered around a character obviously based on Johnny Rebel. First airing in 2010, episode four of the show’s third season, “The Story of Jimmy Rebel”, was written by the show’s creator, black cartoonist Aaron McGruder. Here, Uncle Ruckus, a self-loathing black character, meets his hero, racist country singer “Jimmy Rebel” and the two become close friends and write and perform music together. A list of fictional Jimmy Rebel albums are mentioned, with the best title by far being “I almost NAACPeed Myself.” McGruder and his team wrote several delightful Johnny Rebel-style songs for the episode, and the lyrics sound exactly like something Trahan would have come up with. Though his voice is noticeably lower than Trahan’s, comedian Greg Travis does an admirable job as Jimmy Rebel, and the music accompanying his vocals is perfect. I’m not sure McGruder could have written a better episode even if he had hired Trahan as a consultant. There are several references to Trahan’s songs hidden throughout the episode, and it’s apparent that McGruder spent plenty of time listening to Trahan’s work and that he had fun bringing the Jimmy Rebel character to life on screen.

It should not come as a surprise that there are blacks who are amused by Johnny Rebel. Good comedy is good comedy, and Trahan’s delivery is outstanding. Even those who despise the message promoted in the songs can laugh at the creativity of the lyrics. Howard Stern, a Jewish liberal from New York, pretended to be outraged by the older Johnny Rebel songs, but it’s obvious that he actually enjoyed them. Moreover, Stern would not have invited Trahan onto his show in the first place if he didn’t believe that his large national audience would find the music intriguing.

The Next Johnny Rebel?

Clifford Trahan released no more music after It’s the Attitude, Stupid! and died in the autumn of 2016 at the age of 77. Tragically, we will never get to hear Johnny Rebel’s perspective on the Charlottesville protest, the George Floyd race riots, or Kamala Harris’s disastrous presidential run. Still, we can take heart in the knowledge that as long as the different racial groups living on the North American continent share the same territory, there will be racial tensions; and as long as there are racial tensions, there will be no shortage of inspiration readily available for racially conscious aspiring songwriters. Johnny Rebel may be dead, but a successor could yet emerge.