August 18, 2018
Yvette Landry and The Jukes Take Off At The Whirlybird...a night of music and dancing on Cloud 9.
The Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking is made up of onion, celery and bell pepper. There’s another Holy Trinity in southwest Louisiana: food, shelter, and music. The first two are self explanatory. Music - playing it, singing it, dancing to it, was the way the first French speaking settlers from the maritime provinces countered the trials of life living on the bayous in the early 1800s. If they couldn’t hunt it, trap it, fish for it, they went hungry. On Saturday nights, a family would put whatever furniture they owned outside, invite a fiddler or accordion player and their neighbors to sing and dance the night away. Amazing how working up a sweat doing waltzes and two steps could lift their spirits, remind them of their roots, and invigorate them for what lay ahead.
Yvette Landry doesn’t have to worry about her next meal but she's damn proud of the music that’s bound up with her Cajun roots. You better believe that Swamp Pop stole a place into her heart when she first heard it in dance halls and on the radio. A bunch of those songs are featured on her latest CD, Louisiana Lovin’.
When dancers hear the first eight beats of a Swamp Pop song, the same thing that happened when Swamp Pop was introduced sixty years ago happens tonight. Chair legs squeak as they’re pushed back and men and women look for a partner to hold in their arms for some good belly rubbin’ music.
Yvette and Roddie Romero sang most of the song's on Yvette's 2018 Louisiana Lovin' CD. Yvette got on a swamp pop roll with "My Last Date With You." The title alone gives you an idea of the Swamp Pop genre, just one of the kinds of music gifted to dear 'ol USA by the musicians and singers of southwest Louisiana.
Recording on an iPhone can't do justice to the performer's voices and the high caliber musicians around them but Karl Fontenot, the man in charge of tonight's sound at the one-of-a-kind music venue called The Whirlybird in a little town north of Lafayette, gave us a cloud of sound that combined vocals and instruments that put us in Juke Box Heaven.
And yes, that's 83 year old Warren Storm, the Godfather of Louisiana Swamp Pop, on stage with Yvette. The legend can still bring it.
Yvette and Warren team up for "I Need Somebody Bad Tonight, 'cuz I Just Lost Somebody Good." I mean, could you ever pick a title that represents Swamp Pop any better? And have the man who wrote it perform it with Yvette?
The sound is distorted since I was standing right next to a huge sound stage speaker. What's not distorted? The fervor these big time musicians from New Orleans and Lafayette are bringing to the stage with Yvette Landry and Mr. Swamp Pop.
Back in the mid 1950s, when teenagers around Lafayette tuned in to the radio, they heard singers who changed the course of popular music. Fats Domino, Elvis, Little Richard were knocking on the door. Like they were whipping up a good roux, those teenagers stirred up everything in their music cupboard - Cajun, Creole, country, New Orleans, and rhythm 'n blues - and came up with a totally original sound. It’s not too far a stretch so see how they cranked up the emotion and slowed down the pace to invent Swamp Pop. To this day, it's one of the signature sounds of southwest Louisiana.
Warren Storm was one of those kids. Road trips to New Orleans as a teenager in the mid 1950s was a game changer for Storm (born Warren Schexnider in Abbeville, LA). He credits those visits to New Orleans's nightclubs to the formation of his drumming and singing style that at first sounded like this. Over time, he developed his distinct style and repertoire and never again had to look for work.
You could write a book about how tug-at-your heart Swamp Pop music and singers like Warren Storm have carried the emotionally tuned freight for three generations of men and women who grew up in Acadiana.
Storm stepped on stage and pretty much wrote chapter one tonight. Yvette was paying attention.
"Rainin' In My Heart" (number 17 on R&B chart in 1961) ... the energy on stage is pegging the needle on high...wailing sax, perfectly tuned fiddle riffs and guitar solos... a band on fire. A man enshrined in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame a Grammy nominated singer/songwriter on stage together...what else would you expect?
Swamp Pop artists past and present
Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
- Roddie Romero – vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
- Yvette Landry – vocals, acoustic guitar
- Eric Adcock – keyboard, Wurlitzer electric piano
- Chris French – upright bass
- Derek Huston – tenor sax, baritone sax
- Fiddle – Beau Thomas
Great memories. Thanks
Posted by: B'man | November 08, 2019 at 12:15 AM