Creole Music
Roots and Modern Manifestation
Eighth Installment:

Herman Fuselier -moderator,
Musicians: Goldman Thibodeaux, Joe Citizen (Dancing Zydeco Joe), Joe Hall, Corey Ledet, James (J.B.) Adams

Fuselier: Mr. Goldman, what do you call your music? Do you call it Creole music, old time zydeco how do you refer to your music?
Goldman: I grew up around Lawtell. We called it la-la music it was Creole. There were house dances because at this time in the rural areas there were no clubs. Dances were mostly Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Because most people had no transportation, they would gather together and walk or ride in a wagon. They would go to the icehouse in Opelousas and get a big chuck of ice and use it in making old-fashioned lemonade on a hot Sunday afternoon. The ladies would get in the kitchen and make good things. In cold weather they made gumbo.
(11:33): Fuselier—tell how you got started playing the accordion, you were an adult before you started playing.
Goldman: I was a middle age man; I had a wife and two sons. I had bills to pay; I had to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. I was a farmer and rode a bus to City Service Refinery, getting up at 3 A.M. When I got home in the evening about 6, I would get on the tractor and plow until about 10 o’clock. When I would get behind on plowing my wife, Theresa, would do the plowing. It took all of that to make an honest living. I always loved music. I had an old time washboard that I cut the legs off and fixed it to hang around my neck. I played a triangle. I bought an accordion, never held one in my hand before. I eventually found someone who helped me learn to play. We are all musicians we all have different music. We all have a piece of the pie.
(17:10): Joe Hall –my grandfather worked during the week and played music on the weekends. He would leave his accordion in the rocking chair in a certain position to see if anyone “messed with his box”. After he knew I was the one he eventually took me with him when he played music and would let me play one or two songs.
(25:25): Fuselier: Why did you stay with the old time Creole music?
Hall: That’s the strongest foundation I could find in Louisiana style music. It’s about preserving the traditions. It has opened doors; we play all over the country.
31:14 repeats until 34:00.
(34:00-38:47): Corey Ledet played same song on two different instruments.
(39:09) Ledet: I am originally from Houston; I came to Acadiana to play music. When I was born Clifton Chenier’s music was playing and I grew up listening to his music. My father bought me a piano accordion when I was fourteen. Later I learned to play Creole and Cajun, the more I played and learned the better I liked it, going deeper and deeper into the music. I can play both the traditional and modern but prefers the traditional, the modern does not sound right coming from me. Knowing the old music has opened a lot of doors I have played at various places around the world, including Russia and France.
(45:40-48:15): Goldman played and sang Eunice Two Step
(48:16 repeats until 51:51)

(51:52): Goldman Thibodeaux: People knew when and where the dances would be held because the information was shared among neighbors. There were no telephones or electricity to share information just word of mouth. When we play here (Vermilionville), everybody can come the whole family, grandma, the youngest kids but that’s not like the nightclubs you can’t do that. This reminds me of the old time house dances, it is like the French la-la dances.
(55:30): Fuselier: At the old house dances, how did you ask a girl to dance?
(55:40): Goldman: Parents gave permission to have a house dance, all the furniture had to be moved to another room. If a girl was asked to dance and she declined, she could not dance with someone else, if she did it was considered disrespectful. Several anecdotes of life related to dances were told with Thibodeaux admonishing the group to never forget where you’re from, don’t let go of what your great-grandparents knew. We’ve got it all, if we only know what to do with it. We got good music, lets keep it alive, lets recognize our young musicians, they’re our future. Why are we going to destroy what we have, let’s keep the tradition, let’s keep it alive.
(1:01:44): Goldman Thibodeaux: They had no vehicle like a proper buggy. People like Amede Ardoin, they had to go get him, with something like a Model A. It was a Sunday afternoon, Amede was playing at a dance. My brother was working on a rice farm; a man came to get him. So he asked the man if he wanted to stop at a dance because my brother liked to dance. They were going to skip a meal so that they would have money to get in, they stopped. Amede was playing; he was shot that afternoon, through the window. The bullet only grazed him.
(1:02:54): Fuselier: Now you tell a different story from what I’ve heard. I heard that Amede was beaten up after a dance in Eunice.
Thibodaux: No, he was shot in Mowata on a Sunday afternoon.
Ledet: He went to Pineville (to the mental hospital) but he died a long time after that.
Thibodeaux: This is well before the tragedy happened.
Ledet: The story is that he always had to take off running after dances. Somebody was always doing something ugly to him, which is why he played with McGee. He felt McGee could stop people from doing things to him. McGee was a white man, which was important at that time.
Fuselier: Do you remember what year?
Thibodeaux: No, I don’t want to repeat something I’m not sure of.
Another time my brothers went to get Amede to play at a dance on Saturday night. They got there early, so they sat around and talked for a time. Amede had put his accordion down when he pick it up to begin playing he found in had been punched full of holes. He put his head down and cried. He was paid for playing and a hat was passed about the room to collect money to give him to buy a new accordion that cost $7.50at that time.
Fuselier: Why for such a popular guy it seemed a lot of people didn’t like him or the music he played to shoot at Amede, mess up his accordion.
Thibodeaux: Jealousy.
(1:05:34) Thibodeaux: Only if we work together, it’s a big pie/cake. A cousin once said don’t bad-mouth any musician support him, even if the music was horrible. If you bad-mouth you will never get anywhere. I support everybody, if I go around bad-mouthing, the good Lord don’t like that. Don’t forget where you come from.
(1:09:20) Joe Hall: This is how my grandfather got my grandmother--grandpa stole my grandma after having danced with her on several occasions (he would sneak a dance while her mama went to the outhouse) because he couldn’t pay her mother or give her a cake, he had no money or someone to bake a cake for him. They eventually married and moved to Eunice.
Hall played his version of Pistol Packing Anne that the old timers had played. Louis Godwin family played this song, the family was a fine bunch of accordion players there is no significant to the song; Hall noted that he just likes to put myself into the music he plays. There is a lot of tradition in Cajun and zydeco music but outsiders have also influenced the music.
Hall played his version of the Mexican song La Cucaracha.
(1:24:01-1:26:56) Corey Ledet played a blues song.
Clifton Chenier was a big influence on Ledet playing. Ledet was selected, more than once, to play a tribute to Chenier at the Liberty Theater. One occasion was Clifton Chenier’s birthday; Ledet bought a suit because Clifton always wore a suit when he played. He even fixed his hair as Chenier did. At the conclusion of the concert Ledet received a standing ovation. Chenier is like the tree for zydeco; from him every thing has blossomed. When Ledet had trouble playing one of Chenier’s songs, he visited Chenier’s unmarked grave in Loreauville and sit on the grave practicing one of Chenier’s songs until he got it right. He still does it. James (J.B.) Adams is the one who told him about doing this.
(1:31:07): J. B. Adams: Whenever I had a problem, when I was growing up, I would go to the graveyard, my dad used to do it also, that’s where I learned it from. It’s quiet; no body is going to bother you and you can think. Cory and I went to Eunice today and hung out with Beau Jacques and John Delafose. I do my best thinking, that’s my sanctuary, in the cemetery. You want people to talk back to you because you are looking for an answer; nobody else is going to hear it but you.
(1:32:35) Fuselier: I want you (James (J.B.) Adams) to talk about your radio show in Houston, not only do you entertain people but you try to educate people as to the roots of zydeco, they know about the modern stuff but not the roots. You catch a lot of flack for trying to introduce the tradition stuff.
(1:32:56) James (J.B.) Adams: I co-host a Sunday morning radio show in Houston—you can listen on line at KPFT.org. Cory, Thomas Henry and I learned to play by going to watch people play, we had no relatives to teach us. We saw the music was taking a dive. Everyone up here agrees that music has to evolve, but the music was taking a turn I was not satisfied with. It was getting away from the roots. Cory and I got invited to go to Augusta Heritage in West Virginia. There we met people who were still playing the traditional music. We didn’t think there were people who listened to the traditional type of music, in Houston. Some think Cajun music is for whites zydeco is for blacks. As far as I am concerned, music is colorblind. I started mixing the music, playing the traditional version and then a new version. People did not know the traditional. They thought I was playing the wrong kind of music because the show is Zydeco est pas Sale. I have finally been able to get people to accept the traditional music. I can get on the Internet and seek out these old musicians, as can anyone else can who is interested.
Fuselier: What has been the influence of media and money? In the old days the guys passed the hat, today zydeco musicians are getting paid $3-4,000 for one dance and media has brought the music all over the world has it been good/bad? I guess you can make an argument both sides.
Adams: It’s got its ups and downs. Money is root of all evil, some get paid some don’t. If you care about this music you will buy the CD’s, the musicians deserve to get paid because this maybe their live hood. When old timers are gone all you have to rely on is audio recordings and video. If this music is in your heart, you are going to go buy the recordings and documentaries and study them until you get the music because there is still a market for this style of music.
(1:46:57) Responding to an audience question-Adams: I do a lot of things on my own. Kids will come by my house and I show them some of the documentaries that I own.
Hall: I teach an accordion class. The only people (kids) who show up are the little Cajun kids. I can’t give the kids a perspective of what happened in a Cajun’s life, I can only give them from my Creole perspective, in my life. They come, sit down and learn and want to learn more songs to play. I have to give it to them because they are coming.
Adams: There is the Balfa camp here. There is a camp that takes place every year, in July, at Augusta Heritage in West Virginia that teaches the fundamentals of accordion, fiddle, and guitar. At the end of the week they are able to put together a band that can show case what they have learned. Cory, Joe and I have taught there, it is an eye opener.
The program concluded with the group playing “Ti’Monde Why You Want to Make me Cry”