Valcour Records

This album has been out since June, but I felt duty bound to bring your attention to it.

Released on Valcour Records, it features Mick, Keith and Ronnie, and whole host of other heavyweight Zydeco, Cajun and country players including Zachary Richard, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Molly Tuttle, Taj Mahal, Sonny Landreth, Jimmy Vaughn, C J Chenier, (Clifton’s son), Anthony Dopsie (Rockin Dopsie’s son) and so many more, including Clifton’s original drummer Robert St Julian.

Who is Clifton Chenier you may well ask? Well, he would have been 100 years old this year, and in 1965 he released an album called Louisiana Blues And Zydeco, on Arhoolie Records, which a young Mick Jagger picked up on whilst on one of the first Rolling Stones tours of America. Chenier singlehandedly created the genre Zydeco, the word coming from a creole term – les haricots et pas sales, ( beans and no salt) which was Creole talk for times are tough, or just getting by. If you say lesharicots fast you’ll hear the word zydeco forming. Musically he took the Creole house dance music La La, electrified it with horns and organ, whilst adding blues and R and B into the mix. You can see why Jagger picked up on it, it’s basically a rock n roll, blues and r n b gumbo seasoned with accordion

Chenier wrote many songs in his career, and this album is handful of those songs, each one sung and performed by different people, all tied together by Chenier’s trademark accordion sound and washboard, or rubboard as they call it in the credits. It opens with The Stones playing Zydeco Sont Pas Sales, featuring Robert St Julian, and is my favourite, but only by a hairsbreadth. There is such a level of players on this album it’s hard to say which is best, as they are all winners.

It also includes a couple of songs not written by Chenier, including a version of Release Me, a hit in the UK by smooth crooner Englebert Humperdink. This time round it’s sung by Lucinda Williams and Tommy McClain, and transforms a shmaltzy pop ballad into a drunken bar room lament. Class.

There are twelve tracks on this wonderful rootsie album, and two free downloads which feature John Hiatt and Kim Franklin, but I haven’t worked out how to get those, being the technophobe that I am. If you are a lover of roots or world music this is the album to put on your Christmas wish list, or just treat yourself, you know you’re worth it. ****

Review by Andy Sharrocks

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