Session keyboardist Artie Butler came up with an 'on the spot' organ coda when asked by record producer Artie Morton for the first entry, then made it slightly longer and used it again for the organ coda for the second entry:
That's Hal Blaine playing drums on Indian Reservation, BTW, Like many other sham bands of that that era , the Wrecking Crew did the actual recording. Notice how Hal is holding his sticks to maximize the tom effect.
The song was written by Nashville toonsmith John D. Loudermilk, who was the least [EDIT] likely looking rock person. John was big time friends with Chet Atkins and actually had Greg Allman living under his roof trying to learn songwriting after Duane's death.
A well-known story told by Loudermilk is that, when he was asked by the
Viva! NashVegas radio show about the origins of the 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 a small group of
Invalid Link RemovedIndians.
[6] A self-professed
prankster,
[7] he spun the tale that a Cherokee chieftain, "Bloody Bear Tooth" asked him to make a song about his people's plight on the
Invalid Link Removed, 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".
[6] He went on to fabricate the detail that on that day the tribe revealed that his "great-great grandparents, Homer and Matilda Loudermilk" were listed on the
Dawes Rolls (the citizenship rolls of the Nation).
[6] Had this detail of his tall tale been true, he would have been a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, which he was not.
[6] Neither the
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, nor the
Invalid Link Removed, nor the
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma communities are known as "reservations."
[8]
"Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)"
Single by Raiders
from the album Indian Reservation
B-side "Terry's Tune"
Released February 1971
Format Vinyl record
Genre Rock
Length 2:55
Invalid Link Removed Invalid Link Removed
Songwriter(s) John D. Loudermilk[1]
Producer(s) Mark Lindsay
Raiders singles chronology
"Gone Movin' On"
(1970) "
Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)"
(1971) "Birds of a Feather"
(1971)
"
Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)" is a
song written by
John D. Loudermilk.
[1] The song was first
recorded by
Marvin Rainwater in 1959 and released on
MGM as "The Pale Faced Indian", but that release stayed unnoticed. The first
hit version was a 1968
cover by
Don Fardon—a former member of
The Sorrows—that reached number 20 on the
Billboard Hot 100[2] and number 3 on the
UK Singles Chart.
[3]
In 1971,
The Raiders recorded the song on the
Invalid Link Removed Invalid Link Removed, and it topped the Hot 100 on July 24.
[4] Raiders lead singer Mark Lindsay is part Cherokee. On June 30, 1971 the
RIAA gold certified the record for selling over a million copies.
[5] The record was later
certified platinum for selling an additional million copies.
[5] The song was the group's only Hot 100 number 1 hit and their final Hot 100 top twenty song.
