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Clifford Joseph Trahan (September 25, 1938 – September 3, 2016), best known as Johnny Rebel and Pee Wee Trahan, was an American white supremacist singer, songwriter, and musician. Trahan used the Johnny Rebel name for a series of recordings for J. D. "Jay" Miller's Reb Rebel label in the 1960s in response to the civil rights movement. The 12 songs exhibit racial hatred marketed as "subtle, rib-tickling satire". The songs frequently used the racial slur "nigger" and often voiced sympathy for racial segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Confederate States of America.

In a 2003 interview, Trahan claimed that he "just did it for the money" and that he "didn't set out to spread hate or start trouble". He said "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."

Contents

 * 1Early life
 * 2Career
 * 2.1CD design
 * 2.2Performance
 * 2.3Views on reparations
 * 3Death
 * 4Misattributions
 * 5Legacy
 * 5.1In popular culture
 * 6Discography
 * 6.1Studio albums
 * 6.2Singles
 * 7References

Early life
Trahan was born in Moss Bluff, Louisiana in 1938 to Homer Trahan and Elizabeth Breaux Taylor.

Career
Trahan first recorded songs under the Johnny Rebel name in the mid-1960s at J. D. "Jay" Miller's recording studio in Crowley, Louisiana. Miller produced the sessions and issued the recordings on his Reb Rebel label.

Trahan's first release—the fifth for the Reb Rebel label—was a 45 RPM single of "Lookin' for a Handout" and "Kajun Ku Klux Klan". He then recorded more singles for the label: "Nigger, Nigger", "Coon Town", "Who Likes a Nigger?", "Nigger Hatin' Me", "Still Looking for a Handout", "Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)", "Stay Away from Dixie", and "Move Them Niggers North".

Few of Trahan's songs concern topics other than race. These exceptions include "Keep a-Workin' Big Jim", about the efforts of Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison to solve the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and "(Federal Aid Hell!) The Money Belongs to Us", a song critical of U.S. federal aid programs. Two of these songs were eventually issued in album format by Reb Rebel Records under the title For Segregationists Only.

In 1974, Trahan's song "Lâche pas la patate" (also known as "The Potato Song"), sung by Jimmy C. Newman was released in Canada.

After the September 11 attacks, Trahan noticed a resurgence in interest in his music. He then recorded and released a new song titled "Infidel Anthem", describing the whipping America should lay on Osama bin Laden. His new manager, a fan, booked him on The Howard Stern Show, where he promoted the song. This led to increased interest in his music.

CD design
A CD compilation of his works simply shows a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan together with a depiction of the Confederate Battle Flag. The cover of the album It's the Attitude, Stupid! shows a hooded Klansman, holding what appears to be either a Walkman or an MP3 player with a confederate flag texture, and wearing headphones.

Performance
Trahan only performed a Johnny Rebel song once. In the town of Kaplan, when he was playing country music, someone in the crowd requested a Rebel song. He looked out to make sure there weren't any blacks in the audience. Then he obliged.

Views on reparations
Trahan did have an issue with reparations for slavery, saying "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? I was run out of my country ... my ancestors were run out of Nova Scotia."

Death
Trahan died on September 3, 2016.

Misattributions
Johnny Rebel is often misidentified as the pseudonym of David Allan Coe, an American Outlaw country singer who achieved popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. The confusion stems in part from the song "Nigger Fucker", which appears on Coe's Underground Album. Coe has been quoted as saying that "anyone that hears [Underground Album] and says I'm a racist is full of shit."

Some of Johnny Rebel's songs have also been misattributed to Johnny Horton, an American country music and rockabilly singer who died in 1960. The confusion appears to stem from a song by Horton called "Johnny Reb".

Legacy
Johnny Rebel's songs have been covered by other singers such as Big Reb and the German neo-Nazi band Landser, which covered Rebel's "Coon Town" as "Kreuzberg", the 9th song on its 1997 album, Deutsche Wut/Rock gegen Oben.

In 2003, the website of Resistance Records, a white supremacist label, listed Johnny Rebel's Klassic Klan Kompositions as its no. 2 seller, second only to the video game Ethnic Cleansing.

The Anti-Defamation League reported that "Since the 1960s, when racist country singer Johnny Rebel recorded songs such as "N-- Hatin' Me," more than 500 hate rock bands have formed worldwide".

In popular culture
The television series The Boondocks parodied Johnny Rebel's music in one of its episodes (entitled "The Story of Jimmy Rebel"). The episode portrays a recording artist who is ostensibly Johnny Rebel.

In 2005, the Johnny Rebel song "Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)" was used in the film What Is It?, directed by Crispin Glover.

The Ku Klux Klan (/ˈkuː ˈklʌks ˈklæn, ˈkjuː/), commonly called the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist hate group, whose primary target is African Americans. The Klan has existed in three distinct eras at different points in time during the history of the United States. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism and anti-Catholicism. Historically, the First Klan used terrorism – both physical assault and murder – against politically active blacks and their allies in the South in the late 1860s, until it was suppressed around 1872. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered right-wing extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.

The first Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s during Reconstruction, then died out by the early 1870s. It sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South, especially by using violence against African-American leaders. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secret as to membership and plans. Its numerous chapters across the South were suppressed around 1871, through federal law enforcement. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and conical hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.

The second Klan started small in Georgia in 1915. It grew after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Taking inspiration from D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which mythologized the founding of the first Klan, it employed marketing techniques and a popular fraternal organization structure. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Catholics and Jews, while also stressing its opposition to the alleged political power of the Pope and the Catholic Church. This second organization was funded by initiation fees and selling its members a standard white costume. The chapters did not have dues. It used K-words which were similar to those used by the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades to intimidate others. It rapidly declined in the later half of the 1920s.

The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. They have focused on opposition to the civil rights movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. It is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League puts total KKK membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) puts it at 6,000 members total.

The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination has officially denounced the KKK.