The buckle-polishers and skirt-swirlers are back! Presenting 28 rare goodies from Louisiana and South East Texas. The variant of rock’n’roll that emanated from the Gulf Coast of South Louisiana and South East Texas in the 1950s-60s is as evocative of the area as chicken gumbo, crawfish étouffée and red beans and rice. The youthful Cajuns of the period threw themselves into r’n’r like teenagers across the globe, but had additional influences, not just the hillbilly and blues that created rockabilly, but the ethnic music of their parents and, most telling, the R&B sounds carried over the airwaves from New Orleans.
82 year old New Orleans jazz guitarist Warren Batiste is joined by pianist Larry Siebert, bassist Jim Markway and drummer Richard Hale for this set of mainly jazz standards. Warren has worked with Jimmy McGriff, Lionel Hampton, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Jimmy Scott, Sonny Stitt and Illinois Jacquet but is relatively unknown outside New Orleans. Tracks are 'A' Train, Autumn Leaves, Summertime, in a Sentimental Mood, Out of Nowhere, Bop for Jacques, Straight, No Chaser and Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?
In the mid-50s, as rock’n’roll swept across the USA, the Cajun youth of South Louisiana and South East Texas absorbed the R&B sounds emanating from New Orleans. This was reflected in their music, making it so distinctive. They thrilled to the sound of Fats Domino, Smiley Lewis and Huey Smith and performed their songs with the bands they formed, while the area’s new breed of songwriters – Bobby Charles, Jimmy Donley, Jivin’ Gene, etc – assimilated the Crescent City style in their work. Swamp pop was born, although the genre had yet to be named.
The ninth release in the “…By The Bayou” series brings you some hot rockers from South Louisiana and Southeast Texas, an area where Cajun culture has had a strong influence over its music – and never more so than in the heyday of real rock’n’roll, the 1950s. Rock’n’roll was a hybrid of C&W and R&B right across the USA, but in Cajun country the influences were more specific; the country music was from Texas, the R&B from New Orleans, and into this mix went rockabilly from Memphis via Shreveport and Cajun music. In this exciting compilation you will find all of those influences to varying degrees.
Ace spent a good chunk of 2013 boppin', bouncin', and rockin' on the bayou, and their autumn release, Boppin' by the Bayou: More Dynamite, is one of the liveliest of their excavations of the vaults of Louisiana music moguls Eddie Shuler, Charles "Dago" Redlich, J.D. Miller, and Carol Rachou. Once again, this is hardly reliant on recognizable names. There is the New Orleans giant Bobby Charles, rocking & rolling with the previously unreleased "Teenagers," but that's about it. The rest of this is jumping New Orleans R&B and rock & roll recorded during the late '50s and early '60s but sitting unreleased until this 2013 collection.