Songwriter born John D. Loudermilk in Durham, North Carolina, who wrote some of the most popular songs you have heard, and many you haven’t. He was extremely prolific in the ’60s, and wrote in nearly every musical genre.
His big break came in 1956 when he was working at a local television station and occasionally playing his songs on the air. One of his compositions, “A Rose and a Baby Ruth”, was so popular that people started requesting it. George Hamilton IV was attending college nearby and wanted to record it. It was an overnight sensation, cracking the top ten in December 1956.
The following year, Loudermilk recorded “Sitting in the Balcony” and took it into the top forty. Eddie Cochran quickly got hold of it and did a remake of that went into the top twenty, his first chart success.
It was becoming clear to Loudermilk that success for him was going to come from writing songs for others, not for himself, although he did continue to record under the pseudonym Johnny Dee. He put himself on the map in the U.K. in 1962 with the title track from his 1961 album Language of Love, which hit the top twenty.
In 1964, a group called The Nashville Teens (from Britain, no less) scored a top twenty hit in the U.S. with “Tobacco Road”. It has since been recorded by an unlikely combination of artists that includes Jefferson Airplane, Lou Rawls, David Lee Roth, and Edgar Winter.
The Casinos took “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” to #6 on the Billboard pop chart in 1967. Eddie Arnold covered it a year later, and it was recorded by Glen Campbell as part of a medley with “Don’t Pull Your Love” on his 1976 album Bloodline.
In the ’70s, the hits started to dry up, mainly because Loudermilk just wasn’t writing as much. Living off of his royalties, he was able to pick and choose his projects. The ’80s and ’90s saw him writing for the likes of Gatemouth Brown, Jimmy Buffett, and George Hamilton IV. Hamilton and Loudermilk reunited on the fiftieth anniversary of their first hit together at a concert in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2006.
On 23rd June 2007, J.D. Loudermilk was the guest of honour at the Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. He had been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976.
Having suffered from respiratory ailments and prostate cancer he died of a heart attack at home in Christiana, Tennessee, in 2016 when he was 82 years old.
Jeris Ross recordings
All the Cryin’ in the World (J.D. Loudermilk)
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