‘He made the dust fly!' Mick Jagger and others on 100 years of Clifton Chenier, the king of zydeco

The Guardian

2 days ago

'Clifton Chenier was one of the most influential musicians to come out of Louisiana,' Mick Jagger tells me. 'He turned so many people on to the wonderful, free spirited dance music of zydeco. He was a true original, a trailblazer.' Jagger acknowledges that while no music style can be attributed to one artist, 'there is not a zydeco band who has not followed the template Chenier created'.
Jagger is not engaging in hyperbole here: Clifton Chenier's swaggering, accordion-driven sound introduced the Creole music of rural Louisiana to the world – now known as zydeco, the name derived either from the Creole pronunciation of haricots, or possibly a west African word for music-making. Created by the US's poorest communities, zydeco is very much dance music, and concerts were once held outside to 'make the dust fly', says Chenier's grandniece, Sherelle Chenier Mouton. At its most elemental, it's made with an accordion, a rubboard – a steel washboard played with beer bottle caps attached to the player's fingers to scrape percussive rhythms – and the human voice, and shares characteristics with music made in Haiti, Brazil and other African diaspora nations.
Chenier adapted zydeco into an offshoot of R&B – 'French blues', according to blues legend Jimmie Vaughan – and this funky, swampy music is now beloved across the American south and internationally. Even Beyoncé nodded to zydeco and her 'Creole mama' with her song Formation. 'Uncle Clifton's music brings every kind of people from every background together to dance the two-step,' Mouton says.
Chenier was born 100 years ago this month, and died from kidney disease aged 62 in 1987. To celebrate the centenary there's a biography, a forthcoming Smithsonian Folkways box set and a truly starry tribute album: Tribute to the King of Zydeco has the likes of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jimmie Vaughan and the Rolling Stones joining zydeco and Cajun musicians to play Chenier songs.
'I first discovered his music by buying Chenier LPs in New York jazz and blues record stores in the late 1960s,' says Jagger. 'The Stones always really enjoyed listening to his special blend of Cajun dance music. And still do.'
Indeed, the Stones open Tribute to the King with their version of Zydeco Sont Pas Salés, which has Jagger singing in 'Louisiana French' (a Creolised French patois) while Richards and Wood rock with abandon. This might just be the loosest, rawest Stones recording since Exile on Main St.
'Instantly they made the track, and zydeco, their very own style,' says CC Adcock, a Lafayette-based guitarist-producer who oversaw the Stones session. 'Keith used bendy licks to navigate and emphasise the idiosyncratic traditional accordion chord changes. Ronnie instinctively held down a funky boogie rhythm part in a way that a modern zydeco guitarist might.'
Adcock called on Robert St Julien, Chenier's drummer, and Cajun accordionist Steve Riley, to serve as 'honorary Stones' and ensure a strong Louisiana flavour. 'It's a profound honour to collaborate with the Rolling Stones,' says Riley. 'The fact that they are a part of this is testament to the impact of Clifton's music.'
Born to impoverished sharecroppers outside Opelousas, Louisiana, Chenier was Creole: the Black people of the US south-west who speak French, or whose ancestors did. His father Joseph played accordion at dances ('French music' or 'la-la' as zydeco was then called). Chenier cut sugar cane on plantations before working for the petrochemical industry, playing accordion and singing for his fellow workers. Blues and Caribbean influences spiced his sound and he released his first hit in 1955, Ay Tete-Fee, a success that enabled Clifton and band to tour nationally with Etta James and Little Richard.
'I came out a hole, man,' Chenier told Louisiana writer Ben Sandmel in 1983. 'I mean out the mud; they had to dig me out the mud to bring me into town. All my people speak French and I learned it from them. A lot of people 'shamed of speakin' French, but not me. The old generation had [zydeco] but it died out. I brought zydeco back.'
But he also made an attempt at straight R&B, which failed, and by the early 1960s, Chenier was reduced to working alongside a drummer playing rowdy bars in Houston's Frenchtown. It was here in 1964 that bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins brought Chris Strachwitz, the founder of Arhoolie Records. Strachwitz began recording him, initially releasing 45s for the local market, before his 1966 debut album Louisiana Blues and Zydeco launched him from Houston bars to Newport folk festival, Montreux jazz festival and the Royal Albert Hall. 'People ask me how I can get up on the bandstand and play four hours without stopping,' he told Sandmel. 'It's because I've always been a hard worker, always. When I get up there, I'm up there, no half-steppin'.'
'I saw him in New Orleans in the 70s, then at a high school dance in the Watts neighbourhood outside LA,' Jagger says. 'A night to remember. He was quite magnificent.' Jagger notes how the Watts concert was packed with transplanted Louisiana Creoles all dancing the two-step and, when post-concert he was introduced to Chenier as 'from the Rolling Stones' Clifton thanked him for 'writing nice things about my music' – he was aware of Rolling Stone magazine but completely unaware of the band.
Ann Savoy, a musician and chronicler of Cajun and Creole culture, saw him around the same era, in early 1970s Cankton, Louisiana at a place called Jay's Lounge. 'There were rooster fights going on out the back, gumbo was cooking, people were dancing, it was a hot, sultry night, and the music was smoking.'
Jon Cleary, raised in Kent and long resident in Louisiana, transforms I'm On the Wonder into a deep soul ballad on the tribute album – and remembers that by the early 1980s, Chenier's playing was still just as hot.
'I moved to New Orleans after leaving school,' says Cleary, 'and I saw Clifton every chance I got. He'd be up there sweating in a suit and tie, a giant crown on his head – the king of zydeco! – and the groove was relentless. He'd be wailing a slow blues, a waltz, and then bust out into straight zydeco. And zydeco was a different beast: two beats, two chords – just him on accordion and his brother Cleveland churning out wild funky grooves on a metal washboard.'
Chenier would release a dozen albums on Arhoolie and establish an international platform for zydeco. Esteemed documentary film-maker Les Blank directed 1973's Hot Pepper, which documents Clifton playing Creole clubs; Paul Simon sang of Chenier on Graceland; Rory Gallagher honoured him with the song The King of Zydeco. In 1984 Chenier won a Grammy, a huge honour for the often downtrodden Creole people.
In the early 20th century, parts of the US and Canada introduced legislation banning children from speaking French in public schools, but while 'French music' had endured underground in Creole communities, it was Chenier's success that encouraged others to follow his lead and consequently zydeco thrives today, with rappers and dance beats adding to zydeco's musical gumbo. The video to Beyoncé's Formation references zydeco trail rides: a popular weekend community gathering involving horse riding, barbecues and dancing to zydeco. What Chenier helped shape is now an emblem of the Black south, alongside Cajun culture, created by the white descendants of French ancestors.
'Historically we'd say, down here, if you're white and you play the accordion, then you play Cajun. And if you're Black and you play the accordion, then you play zydeco,' says Joel Savoy of Valcour Records. Cultures that were once drawn along racial lines 'are very blurred now, the two scenes overlap a lot, both musician-wise and audience-wise. Cajun and zydeco music coexist very happily.'
Indeed, on Tribute to the King the cream of Louisiana's zydeco and Cajun musicians accompany the famous guests. There's also Chenier's son CJ, who inherited his father's accordions and band, and Mouton, granddaughter of Chenier's brother Cleveland, who plays rubboard, the ribbed steel washboard Cleveland and Clifton invented for performing.
'Picking up my grandfather's washboard after he passed I wondered if I could play that thing,' Mouton says. 'Well, I strapped it around my neck, turned on some of Uncle Clifton's music and started playing along. Now my three-year-old son, Levi, has his own washboard and joins me on stage every chance he gets. Guess it's safe to say the legacy will live on for generations to come.'
A Tribute to the King of Zydeco is on Valcour Records. Celebrating the Centenary of Clifton Chenier (with Ruben Moreno) takes place at Maverick festival, Easton Farm Park, Suffolk, 4-6 July.