Rockin' SIDNEY

⬇️ ROCKIN' SIDNEY ⬇️

DISCOGRAPHY 1974-2025 (11CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 
        

Sidney Simien aka Rockin' Sidney and Count Rockin' Sidney, (April 9, 1938 – February 25, 1998) was an American R'n'B, zydeco, and soul musician who began recording in the late 1950s and continued performing until his death.

Rockin' Sidney was a long-time zydeco musician who played almost every style of music, from Caribbean beats to blues.

His credits included "No Good Woman", "You Ain't Nothing But Fine", "Tell Me", and his biggest hit, "My Toot Toot", which became a worldwide hit.

Simien was born into a sharecropper's family in the tiny farming community of Lebeau, St.Landry Parish, Louisiana. Sidney took up the guitar at an early age. He started his musical career at age 14 or 15 playing harmonica and guitar. His first gig was as backup for his uncle Frank Simien. By Sidney's late teens, he was leading his own band as Sidney Simien and His All Stars, which included several members of his family.....

Queen IDA

⬇️ QUEEN IDA ⬇️
(Ida Lewis "Queen Ida" Guillory)

(7CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Ida Lewis "Queen Ida" Guillory (born January 15, 1929) is a Louisiana Creole accordionist. She was the first female accordion player to lead a zydeco band. Queen Ida's music is an eclectic mix of R&B, Caribbean, and Cajun, though the presence of her accordion always keeps it traditional.

Born Ida Lee Lewis to a musical family of rice farmers in Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States, her family were Louisiana Creole people and her first language is French. Her family moved to Beaumont, Texas, when she was ten and eight years later moved to San Francisco, California. Although her mother was an accordion player, women were not encouraged to play in public, and Queen Ida learned mostly from her brother Al Lewis, later known as Al Rapone.

After marrying Raymond Guillory she raised their three children and worked as a bus driver but occasionally sat in with her brother's Zydeco band, also cooking Louisiana cuisine for the band members. She was dubbed "Queen Ida" after being chosen queen of a Mardi Gras celebration. A year after her first appearance on stage Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Band signed with the record label GNP/Crescendo, and her first record Play the Zydeco demonstrated her style combining Zydeco with a Tex Mex sound.

Queen Ida and her band played at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1976 and 1988, and the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1975, 1978, and 1991.[citation needed] In 1988, Queen Ida toured Japan, becoming the first zydeco artist to do so. She toured Africa the following year and in 1990 went to Australia and New Zealand.

On the album Back on the Bayou (1999), Queen Ida got together on the bayou in Louisiana with her brother, Al Rapone, for a zydeco reunion. Rapone often wrote and produced for her and formed the Bon Temps Zydeco Band, which later became Queen Ida's backup group. Doubling up on accordions with her oldest son Myrick "Freeze" Guillory, they are joined by Terry Buddingh on bass, James Santiago on guitar, Bernard Anderson on saxophone, Erik Nielsen on drums, and her youngest daughter Ledra Guillory and son Ron "The Rock" Guillory on rub board and vocals. As "Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band," the ensemble was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on November 23, 1985, with Paul Reubens as host.

Queen Ida also co-authored a cookbook, Cookin' with Queen Ida in 1990, which featured Creole recipes. A revised second edition of the cookbook was published in 1995.

Queen Ida continued to perform live through the 2000s, and though she did not release any albums during this period, she has joined her son Myrick and his band onstage. She officially retired from playing in 2010 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she enjoys cooking for her friends and family. (Wikpedia)

NEW!

1983-In San Francisco @FLAC

Wild Bill PITRE

⬇️ WILD BILL PITRE ⬇️

(1CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Phil Wight, a writer for the English Magazine Blues and Rhythm writes: Wild isnt the most orthodox guitarist around and with his thick as a stand of Kudzu vine Louisiana accent and occasional song rendered in French its sometimes hard to pick up on what he is singing. Sort of a roux of the Fat Possum sound hot-wired to John Lee Hooker and Joseph Spence via the swamps and rice fields. Wild doesnt sing a song: he assaults it with violent strumming and picking and brings it to a conclusion when the mood takes him!

Although its chaotic in patches its also bluesy as hell; its totally infectious good time music with the rough edges intact. Paul Orta holds things together on harp and perfectly complements Wilds wayward picking.

Wilds music is a liberal mixture of Lightnin Hopkins influences, and I detect a trace of Juke Boy Bonner also. Sawmill Blues displays influences from the Louisiana style. The spirit of Jimmie Rodgers rears its head on Mexican Blues and its C&W all the way with If You Miss Me.

That records like this were a thing of the past. Wild describes himself as an old coonass from Louisiana and if you like your blues neat and sanitized then Wild isnt for you, but if you enjoy a musician who defies convention (and sometimes defies description) and is not afraid to take liberties then I Was Raised On A Farm certainly is worth checking out.

In addition to Wild Bill on vocals and guitar, musicians are: Paul Orta & Dan Moser (Harmonica), Little Ray Ybarra & Butch Jarvis (Drums), Paul Choate (Bass), and Roger Ward (Slide Guitar).

Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at The Musik Faktory/Great Recordings in Port Arthur, Texas.

Wild Bill Pitre died June 27, 2003.

Buckwheat ZYDECO

⬇️BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO⬇️

(Stanley Dural, Jr.)
DISCOGRAPHY 1979-2009 (16CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Stanley Dural, Jr. (November 14, 1947 – September 24, 2016), better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco, was an American accordionist and zydeco musician. He was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success. His music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band ("Ils Sont Partis" being French for "They have left"), but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco.

The New York Times said: “Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics…propulsive rhythms, incendiary performances.” USA Today called him “a zydeco trailblazer.” Buckwheat Zydeco performed with famous musicians such as Eric Clapton (with whom he also recorded), U2 and the Boston Pops.

The band performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics to a worldwide audience of three billion people. Buckwheat performed for President Clinton twice, celebrating both of his inaugurations. The band appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, CNN, The Today Show, MTV, NBC News, CBS Morning News, National Public Radio’s Mountain Stage, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. .... (Wikipedia)

Clifton_CHENIER

⬇️ CLIFTON CHENIER ⬇️

&

 C.J. CHENIER 

DISCOGRAPHY 1965-2013 (34CD/DVD)

 CLIFTON CHENIER 

        

Clifton Chenier (June 25, 1925 – December 12, 1987), a Louisiana French-speaking native of Opelousas, Louisiana, was an eminent performer and recording artist of Zydeco, which arose from Cajun and Creole music, with R&B, jazz, and blues influences.

He played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983. In 1984 he was honored as a National Heritage Fellow. He was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

In 2014, he was a Grammy recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. He was known as the 'King of Zydeco', and also billed as the 'King of the South'....

 C.J. CHENIER 

        

C.J. Chenier (born Clayton Joseph Thompson, September 28, 1957, Port Arthur, Texas) is the Creole son of the Grammy Award-winning "King of Zydeco", Louisiana musician, Clifton Chenier.

In 1987, Chenier followed in his father's footsteps, and led his father's band as an accordion performer and singer of zydeco, a blend of cajun and creole music.

With five previous albums to his credit, by 1994, Chenier began to record for Chicago-based Alligator Records.

Chenier grew up in the 1960s, in the housing projects of his native Port Arthur, Texas. There, Chenier was aware of, but not exposed to his father's music as a young child, and had not heard the word Zydeco until later in his youth. Instead, Chenier developed tastes in the 1970s soul, funk and jazz music of James Brown, Funkadelic, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.....

ALLIGATOR STOMP

⬇️ ALLIGATOR STOMP ⬇️

COLLECTION (5CD)

Boozoo CHAVIS

⬇️ BOOZOO CHAVIS ⬇️

(Wilson Anthony "Boozoo" Chavis)

DISCOGRAPHY 1990-2000 (16CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Wilson Anthony "Boozoo" Chavis (pronounced CHAY-viss) (October 23, 1930 – May 5, 2001) was an American accordion player, singer, songwriter and bandleader. He was one of the pioneers of zydeco, the fusion of Cajun and blues music developed in southwest Louisiana.

Chavis made his first recording in 1954, "Paper in My Shoe," based on a song he heard performed by Creole accordionist Ambrose "Potato" Sam. Chavis's version was an uptempo tune with a dance beat about being too poor to afford new shoes or socks, so he placed paper in his shoes to keep his feet warm when the holes in the sole got too large. The song, sung in both French and English, was originally released on the Folk-Star label, a subsidiary of Goldband, before being reissued by Imperial Records.

This recording was the first commercially released zydeco song and the first zydeco hit, and was subsequently acknowledged as a zydeco standard. The song was recorded at the instigation of local entrepreneur Eddie Shuler, who teamed Chavis up with a rhythm and blues band named Classie Ballou's Tempo Kings. The first recording session was not successful, so Shuler brought whiskey in for subsequent takes, and the band lost their inhibitions. An inebriated Chavis fell off of his chair at the end of the released version of "Paper in My Shoe", so the song fades out, which was one of the first records to use that technique.

Chavis was convinced that the recording was more successful than the record companies claimed, later saying: "I got gypped out of my record. I get frustrated, sometimes. I love to play, but, when I get to thinking about 1955... They stole my record. They said that it only sold 150,000 copies. But, my cousin, who used to live in Boston, checked it out. It sold over a million copies. I was supposed to have a gold record." As a result, Chavis lost trust in the music business,[10] and over the next thirty years only released three more singles: "Forty-One Days" (Folk-Star, 1955), "Hamburgers & Popcorn" (Goldband, 1965), and "Mama! Can I Come Home" (credited to the Dog Hill Playhouse Band, Crazy Cajun, 1974)..... (Wikipedia)

Clarence GARLOW

⬇️ CLARENCE GARLOW ⬇️

(Clarence Joseph 'Bon Ton" Garlow)

(8CDs)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Clarence Garlow (February 27, 1911 – July 24, 1986) was an American R&B, jump blues, Texas blues and cajun guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his recording of the song "Bon Ton Roula", which was a hit single on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart in 1950. One commentator called it "a rhythm and blues laced-zydeco song that helped introduce the Louisiana music form to a national audience."

Clarence Joseph Garlow was born in Welsh, Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, and moved to Beaumont, Texas, with his family when he was a child. He learned the rudiments of playing the fiddle as a youngster. In his teenage years he learned to play the guitar and accordion. His guitar playing was influenced by T-Bone Walker. He worked in several factories before recording for Macy's, a small record label in Houston, Texas, in 1949. His debut release, "She's So Fine" backed with "Blues As You Like It", was issued in January 1950.

For the follow-up, Garlow recorded his own song "Bon Ton Roula", a sixteen-bar blues with "an insistent, swirling rhumba rhythm". "The song featured some of the same kind of broken Cajun-isms as Hank Williams's 'Jambalaya'". It became a hit in 1950, reaching number seven on the Billboard R&B chart. Following the success of the single, Garlow toured in Texas and Louisiana.

Feature Records then released another version of his hit, retitled "New Bon Ton Roula". Lyric Records issued two more singles in 1951, but neither made the record charts. The following year, Garlow opened the Bon Ton Drive-In in Beaumont. Relocating to Los Angeles, California, he recorded his third version of "Bon Ton Roula", issued by Aladdin Records as "New Bon-Ton Roulay" in April 1953.

Flair Records released "Crawfishin'" backed with "Route 90" in November 1953, for which he was credited on the label as "Bon Ton" Garlow.

Garlow returned to Beaumont in late 1954 and toured with Clifton Chenier, billed as the Two Crazy Frenchmen. Garlow also undertook further recordings, released by Feature, Folk Star, and Goldband Records over the next few years. None had success outside of his local area, and Garlow was by then working as a DJ for the Beaumont-based radio station KJET, for which he hosted the Bon Ton Show until 1961.

By this time Garlow had ceased performing and recording, but he continued working in radio in Beaumont and later in Orange, Texas, until the early 1970s. He supplemented his income by working as a mail carrier. He infrequently played locally in the early 1980s, and he performed at the 1984 San Francisco Blues Festival.

Garlow died in July 1986 in Beaumont, aged 75. (Wikipedia)