Former Accession # TI1-006

0:33 A lot of people come by to see Canray for articles and t.v. and radio interviews.
3:05 Plays at Marc and Ann Savoy's Liberty Theater between bands often. He talks about traveling abroad for shows and says he had to do about 25 interviews in 20 days for one trip. They didn't want to interview anyone but him. He thinks it's because there aren't many black fiddle players. They talk about Clarence Gatemouth Brown.
6:55 He talks about why he doesn't like to play for kings and queens.
8:18 He's been fighting cancer for two years but is doing better.
11:57 He says he's no the kind of musician who plays a lot unlike his uncle or Dennis McGee. McGee told him he'd rather play than eat. Canray says he's different. He says he could have made a living playing the fiddle but didn't like it enough. He always had a hard job doing hard work.
13:50 One time he quit playing for three years and sold all of his fiddles and equipment. That was around 1963. Canray tells a story of a friend of his who drove a garbage truck in Jennings and found a fiddle in the trash that he gave to him. Canray lived in Oberlin at that time.
17:02 He told Clifton Chenier he was no longer playing and sold all of his gear. Clifton told him not to stop and that things were just beginning to get good. In the last part of 1963, a car pulls up to Canray's house in the country. It was Bois Sec Ardoin and a man from New York who wanted them to play the Newport Rhode Island Jazz Festival.
22:00 Milton Vanicor stops by with peaches for Canray. Milton tells them he just recorded a tape two months ago in Lafayette with his nephew Terry Huval who plays with Jambalaya.
25:10 Milton plays the tape for them.
36:00 Canray talks about the first time went to a festival. He played the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966 and they gave him a fiddle workshop with a bunch of big-name fiddle players. He was embarrassed with his little old fiddle. But it went well. He asked what the heck were they (he and Bois Sec) doing there at a jazz festival when he doesn't play jazz. He was told all the Dixieland music went back to the slaves. They talk about the song "Home Sweet Home". He had not yet made a record at that time, but he was recording on his way back home from the festival in Washington D.C.
44:40 Columbus Stockade Blues came from a French tune. Moon Mullican.
43:40 Canray talks about him and Bois Sec growing up with musicians like his father and Amede Ardoin. He remembers his grandfather and a bunch of old men getting together on Christmas Eve to sing songs all night. They would take the coal from the Christmas fire to make their calendar. They would take onion, salt and garlic and put it on the calendar and see how it reacted to predict how the year would turn out. He talks about songs moving from one generation to another. He talks about going to France in 1990 and recognizing songs.
51:20 Amede Ardoin was the first black man to make a French record. Amede and his dad would fix their own accordions. Sometimes they were competitive. Amede didn't like to work and never married. He always had his accordion with him and wanted to play for money, Canray's dad was a foreman and had a wife and played dances for the black people in the area. Sometime he'd be paid with firewood. But Amede didn't want that. He would play for the white people.
58:27 Canray's dad didn't speak a word of English. His mother played the accordion too but just for the children. Women didn't play dances. Women who played music were considered bad women.
1:01:10 Canray talks about how a lot of musicians he knows don't read music or know keys or what an octave is.
1:07:00 Canray has been playing with younger musicians. Beausoleil, File. They are learning a lot from him. He says Michael Doucet has recorded nearly his and Bois Sec's entire album. Canray doesn't think Doucet has recorded any original music. Zydeco Gris Gris. Canray doesn't like him playing only other people's music.
1:11:12 Canray had a string band called the Basille Boys. They never recorded. Canray talks about trouble Amede would get into for some of the songs he wrote. Amede was living in Pineville when he died.
1:23:23 Douglas Bellard. Canray made cigar box fiddle with screen door wire.