REBEL 501

HAPPY FATS

65

LH-1924 - Veterans plea   (Jamil Music)

LH-1925 - Dear Mr President   (Jamil Music)

REBEL 501

Crowley, LA   (Jay Miller)

During the mid-sixties the deep-voiced Happy Fats aired his political feelings in a series of controversial releases for Jay Miller's Rebel Records and had a big underground hit with "Dear Mr.President." "It was a civil rights thing," he says, "when they were pushing us down here. It sold over 250.000 copies and Jay Miller gave me a gold record. We didn't have any problems with that, not at all. There wasn't anything violent about it, it was just a joke. I had a car of black people run me down on the highway one time coming in Lafayette and they said , 'Are you the fellow that made "Dear Mr.President"?' I said I was and they said, 'We'd like to buy some records,' they bought about fifteen records. There was a big van full of black people and they loved it. Actually when all this was happening we always got along with the black people down here, that's the Cajun people. And either side at that time they didn't want integration very much, they wanted to go each their own way."

(Source: Thilo Piper)