I have been a longtime fan of the late country musician Johnny Horton’s music. Recently a discussion came up about Johnny Horton at work, and a co-worker commented that she would never again listen to any of Johnny’s music because of all the hate songs he had performed. I replied that I had never heard of Johnny Horton doing hate songs.
The next day she brought a printout of Horton’s music that’s available for download at one of the shareware Internet sites. Some of the listed songs were Horton’s old standards, and some were obviously hate music. “Take Our Country Back” and “Who Likes A Nigger” were two of the many titles that indicated hate music. I asked her if she had downloaded any of this to see if the singer sounded like Johnny Horton, and she replied “Of course not.”
Now, also on this list of “Horton’s music” was “Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”. Since Johnny Horton was killed in 1960 and the * Edmund Fitzgerald * didn’t sink until 1975, I find it unlikely that Johnny Horton did a version of “Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Also, it’s a given that in some parts of the country there was significant backlash to the civil rights movement of the ‘60’s. Here the timing of Horton’s death comes into play again. I question if hate music would have been produced as early as 1960. Even if Johnny Horton was inclined to do hate music, was there time for him to make dozens of such songs before he died?
Anybody out there have any knowledge, information, or thoughts on this subject that they would like to share? Is there any accountability for the accuracy of information on the shareware sites?
Predictably, the Johnny Horton sites that I called up on “Google” didn’t mention hate music.
Information about artists and what songs they recorded is notoriously inaccurate on shareware internet sites so, until you have firm confirmation, I’d take that info with a grain of salt.
For more conclusive proof, I recommend you go here, plug in Johnny Horton’s name, and see what it comes up with.
That’s interesting, but I’m skeptical. I’ve never heard of any hateful music from Johnny Horton. (Well, unless you count the “bloody British” line in “Battle of New Orleans.”)
I am aware of some hateful country music recorded by someone under the pseudonym “Johnny Rebel.” There have been rumors that “Johnny Rebel” is David Allen Coe (of “You Don’t Have to Call Me Darlin’” fame), but Coe denies it.
Is it possible that “Johnny Rebel” got conflated with “Johnny Horton?” I’d hate to see Horton smeared as a racist unless there’s good evidence he deserves it.
I’ve heard this rumour before and I’ve yet to see a shred of proof. I think it’s just another internet myth similar to the recent one floating around that Shakira is an anti-semite (she isn’t). Follow *NDP’s link and you’ll find that Horton’s recording career was quite short and his discography easy to search through.
My own theory is that somebody conflated Johnny Horton with a vile anti-civil rights singer named Johnny Rebel. Rebel’s sound, like Horton’s, is also country/honky tonk but his catalog is filled with crap like Move Them Niggers North and much worse :mad:. I refuse to link to Rebel’s site but if you google on the words “johnny rebel nigger”, you’ll find it easily enough.
Like a rubber-necker at a traffic accident, I couldn’t stop browsing this nimrod’s web site. In the lyrics section I found the song Who Likes A Nigger listed. Pretty strong evidence, IMHO, that Horton’s reputation has been unfairly tarnished.
Not to mention Gordon Lightfoots’. I love The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald.
When Audiogalaxy was active it would throw up { pun intended }
at least half a dozen hate songs by " JH ".
I was very shocked; asked around and got no conclusive answers.
However, I downloaded one of them. It kinda sounded like
Horton, but was so disgusting I deleted it immediately and
in a wonderful piece of selective memorising decided it never
happened.
Many thanks to all who responded. I checked out the site suggested by NDP and several other Johnny Horton sites as well. Nowhere did I find any mention of hate music.
Special thanks to spoke- and Hodge for literally doing my dirty work for me. Since I trust y’all’s researching skills implicitly, I spared myself from checking out the “Johnny Rebel” site. Unless some other evidence to the contrary appears, I’m satisfied that the hate music is being incorrectly attributed to Johnny Horton.
It is very disturbing that there are people out there that are distributing music without making any effort to verify if the artist, etc, that they are listing is correct. Special care should be taken with noxious items such as hate music, and how hard would it have been to figure out that Johnny Horton died 15 years prior to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and thus couldn’t possibly have done a song about it?
You’re pretty close, BobT. Both died in cars. Horton via accident, but Ol’ Hanks death was a little different. Hank hired an 18-year old boy that he didn’t know to drive his car from Montgomery to a show somewhere in the Northeast. Hank got in the back seat with a bottle, some painkiller pills and a woman he wasn’t married to. This was New Year’s Eve, 1953, I think.
They stopped for gas somewhere in North Carolina? and discovered Hank was dead. He’d overdosed on the mix of alcohol and painkillers.
His death, like his life, was another “Hank Williams song”.
Horton was indeed married to Hank’s widow. Another oddity was that both of them did their last performance at the same place. Some honky-tonk in Texas. Horton was killed by a drunk driver while he was driving home from his performance.
Now, it was my fault, ultimately, because I probably hit “preview” and forgot to come back to “post.”
Such is the tedium of the board the last few weeks. I spend about 3-4 hours per night on here, and trying to get it all done ain’t easy with the slowness.
Anyway, I think the site provides some info you might find interesting. I didn’t read it all, but here you go.
Thanks for posting the site, samclem. The author of the site claims that the “J. West” that wrote for blues singers such as Lightnin’ Slim and Lazy Lester also wrote for Johnny Rebel under a different name.
I have a number of 45 rpm records of the above mentioned blues singers, plus Slim Harpo and Lonesome Sundown. All these are on the Excello label. Perhaps the * Rebel Records* label was created for the Johnny Rebel hate music stuff.
Anyway, the site was interesting. It’s loaded with the standard apologist crap, and talks of Johnny Rebel’s music being among the most loved, etc., but I for one never even heard of Johnny Rebel until I started this thread. I didn’t open any of the links posted there, so beware if you do, no telling what may be lurking.
At least it appears that Johnny Horton had nothing to do with the hate music, which was my original concern.
You’re pretty close, JCoM. The 18-year old was Charles Carr, a professional driver (his dad owned a cab company) who had driven Hank before. Traveling from Alabama to West Virginia (with no woman in the car), they stoppped in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Hank got a morphine injection from possibly two different doctors. He may have died in the hotel in Knoxville, but since his being comatose was not at all unusual, he was carried out and put in the back seat of the car. Carr finally noticed he was dead in Oak Hill, West Virginia. If he died in Tennessee, then it was on December 31, 1952. The official date of death, though, is New Year’s Day, 1953.
I realize I’m being nitpicky here, but we’re talking about Hank Williams, for goodness sake.
I heartily recommend Hank Williams: The Biography by Colin Escott if you have any interest at all in Hank.