0:00 McCormick compiled two LPs "A Treasury of Field Recordings" put out by 77 Records in England around 1959 to let other people know about musical traditions in Houston. He said he wouldn't do it again. It's too much of a mish mash and nobody likes all of it, but that that's the nature of documentary recordings. He says when he talks about Zydeco, he means the music of Frenchtown in Houston. He doesn't accept the second layer of the use of the word Zydeco and believes in was usurped by Louisiana tourists and that the lines were blurred in the 1960s.
7:50 McCormick says that zydeco came before Clifton Chenier. Clifton brought it back with his heated performance, but his period of fame and influence came later than what he's talking about. By the 1940s when he started recording it wasn't common in Frenchtown. He says he remembers seeing all of these different spellings of the word on posters including zordico and Lightnin' Hopkins put out a record called Zologo. He talks about deciding on the spelling of the word and settling on 'zydeco'. His spelling ended up being the one most used. He talks about doing the same thing with the word 'songster' from his record note writing. He talks about a lack of black scholars.
16:40 He worked for the Smithsonian for 10 years. He was interested in and worked in jazz earlier. When he heard a man playing guitar on the street he became interested in that kind of music and began recording people around Houston and branched out to E. Texas. It was then that he realized his real interest was in what makes cultures expressive and when and why the cultural expressions happen. He doesn't have the answers but, in his research, found things that suggest answers. He gives the example of the 4th ward section of Houston which had a population of 10,000 people in the 1920s that produced 200 professional musician. There was a grocer in the neighborhood who had put a piano in front of the store and the kids would fight to play it and an older man would teach them. He recorded Buster Pickens and did a movie about him and then went to Austin to find Robert Shaw and found that he knew the distinctive 4th ward sound.
25:10 He talks about the German influences that are overlooked and gives some examples of how they could have influenced early jazz and blues and the use of brass instruments and the accordion. He found the influences all along the gulf coast. He says that there was more investigation into guitar players than piano players in blues. He says there was a begrudging acknowledgement of piano and women singers and jug bands.
35:00 He talks about doing a grid search around Texas and Louisiana and finding there were pockets of interest in different instruments and styles. In 1965 he was invited to bring some convicts to Newport to sing Texas work songs.
40:30 McCormick mentions Carl Seashore, a psychologist who studied musicianship in the 1920s. He looked at the abilities of the families of musicians.
47:35 He talks about what Frenchtown and the adjacent sections were like at the time he was doing his fieldwork and Frenchtown's Catholic distinction and the perception of the Frenchtown community by blacks outside of the community.
52:52 They talk about the folk etymology of La la, Zydeco. McCormick talks about including mediocre artists on his Treasury of Field Recordings to document what was happening and the roots of later, more-famous artists like Clifton Chenier. He talks about star-power's ability to corrupt what's commonplace in the musical genres.
59:00 He believes Anderson Moss to be the most accomplished musician in Zydeco who did not deviate in the way Clifton Chenier did. Clifton asked McCormick to help him get some recognition and he said it reminded him of Jimmy Ford "The Great White Bird". But he never recorded him. It's not what he was interested in. He doesn't recommend show business. He thinks Anderson Moss made better decisions than Clifton in that regard. He talks about Clifton and Lightnin' Hopkins fighting on stage. Irene's was a small stage in Houston where the prima donna attitudes where not tolerated.
1:14:55 They talk about the last years of Clifton's life and about what Tisserand's book will be about. McCormick talks about Lightnin's association with Zydeco musicians and Spider Kilpatrick's presence in the band and cultural overlaps in the music in Houston back when he was working in field recording. They discuss the geography of Frenchtown and the surrounding area. McCormick believes that Kashmere Gardens was designed to attract the Louisiana migrants and about Houston's growth. Frenchtown was a sort of tourist destination for other Houston residents. McCormick talks about the string bean breaking dance. He says Zydeco was the dance first.