Notes from Robert Willey

Meeting Buckwheat Zydeco

My work in documenting music of Southwest Louisiana began by recording festivals in the Lafayette area. I teach music media and felt it would provide good raw material for my students to work with for classroom projects. The musicians and sound companies were very generous in allowing me to make multitrack recordings. This was happening about the time that the price of camcorders and hard drives had dropped to the point of making desktop video production affordable. We got some new video and computer equipment at school and started making DVDs.

Ivan Klisanin

Ivan Klisanin mixing for
KRVS remote broadcast

In addition to post production, my students from the School of Music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and South Louisiana Community College became involved in the making the field recordings. We took our Alesis HD24 hard disk recorder and plugged directly into the monitor or front of house mixers. The best situation was to work with KRVS Radio, taking their direct outputs while Ivan Klisanin or Terry Dupuy did the on air mix. Meanwhile we were video recording with our little camcorders. The audio recordings were later mixed in stereo and surround sound, and laid back to the edited video we captured with little camcorders. We recorded shows from Festival International de Louisiane, the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival, Festival Acadiens, and Downtown Alive. When it came time to make the DVD Ivan did the mixing and mastering.

Some of the artists we recorded:


Geno Delafose and French Rockin Boogie	Michael Doucet and BeauSoleil	Dexter Ardoin and the Creole Ramblers


The Frank Family Band	Corey "Lil Pop" Ledet and His Zydeco Band	Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble

The tape from all three cameras ran out while we were recording BeauSoleil, so I had to create some video for the first part of the song, up to the point where the screen splits into four parts. The first version was even wilder than what ended up on the DVD. I took Todd Mouton's suggestion to incorporate some swamp scenes and replaced the most psychedelic section with some footage from an outing to Henderson Swamp, probably not right scene for the bayou mentioned in Zydeco Gris Gris.

As the collection of recordings grew it seemed like it was time to share them with the community. I got a grant from the Acadiana Arts Council with Karl Fontenot, chief engineer at KRVS in order to pay for manufacturing copies of a DVD.

Before starting at KRVS in 1998, Karl worked at the Acadiana Open Channel where he produced a series of video recordings of the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music festivals. One day Karl opened up the closet at KRVS and pulled out five 3/4" video tapes recorded by Dan Hildenbrandt in 1987 and about forty S-VHS tapes he had produced of groups performing at the 1995, 1996, and 1998 Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music festivals, along with interviews made with Paul Scott. As some of the tapes had started to deteriorate I transferred about twenty of them to DVD, which were placed, along with the master tapes, in the growing archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore in UL Lafayette's Dupré Library where they will remain available to researchers. My idea, enriched by suggestions from John Snyder, was to have the DVD be an educational project with music performances, interviews, accordion lessons, demonstrations of accordion construction and operation, genealogies, etc. After reviewing Karl, Paul, and Dan's material it quickly became obvious that the most culturally valuable and expedient approach would be to preserve and make available the good work that had already been done but not widely seen, while taking the opportunity to include the events I had recorded during the last two years.

Karl Fontenot

Karl Fontenot

Boozoo Chavis

Boozoo Chavis

As the grant period for the DVD production was winding to a close, Paul Scott tracked down a few more tapes, including a well produced video of Boozoo Chavis at the 1996 Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival. I was excited to be able to include two of the songs, Johnnie Billy Goat and Tell Me What's The Matter. During the second introduction Anthony Charles Chavis informs the audience that Beau Jocque and his band will be onstage next, and the camera searches and finds him and his wife in the crowd.

We were not able to find the tape of Beau Joque's performance that year, nor any of the tapes from the 1997 Festival. If they surface they would become the core of another volume in what I hope becomes a series. Whether or not they are found, there is still plenty of old material to work with. Dan Hildenbrandt made about forty 3/4" tapes himself, some of which were used in his documentary "Zydeco Gumbo". Of course there are lots of new things to record as well, and many bands we didn't have the resources to get to.

Beau Jocque

Beau Joque

Clifton 87

Clifton Chenier, The King of Zydeco

One of Dan's recordings was of Clifton Chenier’s performance at the 1987 Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival, two songs from which appeared on his documentary “Zydeco Gumbo”. This turned out to be the King of Zydeco's last recorded show, as he died soon afterwards. I picked a song that Dan hadn't used that showed off the tightness of the band. His son, C.J. and I agreed that this shouldn’t be Clifton's only appearance on this DVD. While his fans might appreciate this bittersweet access to rare footage, someone unfamiliar with the legacy might get the wrong idea.

Clifton Chenier and granddaughter, Felicia Chenier

Clifton 87 band

C.J. Chenier (saxophone/keyboard), Warren Cesar (trumpet), Harry Hypolite (guitar)

To show Clifton in his prime, C.J. suggested contacting Les Blank to secure permission to include some scenes from his 1973 film “Hot Pepper”. Les generously agreed to allow me to include some scenes from that film of him playing.

In addition to shows, we recorded accordion lessons with Dexter Ardoin, Jeffery Broussard, and Corey Ledet. We interviewed Jude Taylor, Michael Doucet, Terrance Simien, (dancing) Zydeco Joe, John Broussard, Melvin Caesar, Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin, Dexter and Morris Ardoin, Zydeco Joe, (Dancing) Zydeco Joe, Arhoolie president Chris Strachwitz, accordion builder Larry Miller, Goldman Thibodeaux, Lawrence Ardoin, Curley Taylor, D'Jalma Garnier, and Dickie Landry. Karl and Paul had already interviewed Carlton and Preston Frank, Nathan Williams, Fernest Arceneaux, Boozoo Chavis, Zydeco Joe (the musician), and Keith Frank in 1997. In the end, as there was so much music, the idea of including interviews and lessons was dropped. Perhaps in the future more material will be made available on other DVD or streamed online. Some extras are accessible by browsing the DVD on a compatible computer.


Jude Taylor	Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin	Morris Ardoin, Chris Strachwitz, Dexter Ardoin

Francis Pavy painting

Painting by Francis Pavy

The grant from the Acadiana Arts Council (funded from the Lafayette Consolidated Government) paid for the cost of manufacturing copies. The DVDs are not for sale. They have been donated to libraries and cultural organizations, and used by the artists for promotional purposes.

The performance and synchronization rights were generously donated by the artists and composers and publishers. Francis X Pavy agreed to allow us to the use of some of his paintings for the design of the package.

We will be looking later to develop this into a project with wider distribution.

Thanks

Thanks to Vicki Chrisman and the Acadiana Arts Council, the Lafayette Consolidated Government, the Alesis Corporation, John Snyder, the Friends of the Humanities, Carl Brasseaux and the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, Gerald Breaux and Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission, Gordon Brooks and University of Louisiana's College of the Arts, and the Center for Louisiana Studies for their financial and logistical support. A more complete listing of credits is included on the website and the DVD-ROM portion of the disk itself, accessible when playing it on a compatible computer with a DVD drive. Being new to Louisiana, I benefited from the help, advice, and contacts of my friends: Karl Fontenot, Paul Scott, Todd Mouton, Herman Fuselier, Jiro Hatano, Ivan Klisanin, D'Jalma Garnier, John Snyder, Andy Cornett, and Bob Holbrook. Special thanks to Maria Oneide Willey for her help and support throughout the entire process.

Et toi!

Robert Willey
http://willshare.com/willeyrk

[ From La La to Zydeco ]