*Down In The Bayous In Cajun Country- “The French Blues”, The Hackberry Ramblers

Click On Title To Link To Hackberry Ramblers Website.

CD REVIEW

The introductory paragraphs in this review have been used to review other Cajun CDs in this space.

Well, it is about time that I started to review some of the work of the good old boys and girls from the bayous down in Cajun country. Places like Lafayette and Lake Charles evoke memories of time and place in Cajun musical history. You know, at the edges of the places where the likes of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis learned their crafts. And places where all kinds of mixes of music and races blended to form unique sounds all their own. Accordions, washboards, fiddles, guitars and what ever came to hand on those whiskey-drenched Saturday nights.

And on those nights come names like Clifton Chenier and Booboo Chavis that form the black-influenced strand of the music. The Hackberry Ramblers and the likes of Waylon Thibodeaux form another, the good old white boys. French Acadian exiles, English “swamp foxes” of undetermined origin, black escaped slaves, “poor white trash”- it is all there mixed in one form or another. For the most part there were no serious conscious attempts to mix the strands but how could the intermixing influences be avoided in that small isolated area of southwest Louisiana. And all under the umbrella of what I call the “French blues”. Get your dancing slippers on.

“Jolie Blonde”: The Hackberry Ramblers, The Hackberry Ramblers, Arhoolie Records, 1993

Back in the early days of Cajun music there was something of a split between the “purists” who insisted that the fiddle was the central driving force behind the music and those who argued that the accordion was that force. I take my stand with those who argue for the accordion but if you want a very strong argument for the fiddle then your stop is at old time player Luderin Darbone’s Hackberry Ramblers. This group was practically a Cajun institution at the Saturday barns dances and other venues in the old days. The composition of the group, and its popularity, changed over time by this was always easy material to listen to. And to get up to dance to, as well. Listen to the virtual title track Cajun anthem “Jolie Blonde”, “Grand Texas”, “Colinda”, “Fais Pas” and “Louisiana Waltz” if you want to know the place where Cajun intersected Western Swing and a million other influences that this band incorporated in its repertoire from its inception in 1933.