Angola to Zydeco: Louisiana Lives

Don’t You Worry about Boozoo

175 Don’t You Worry about Boozoo In a previously unpublished 1999 interview, Boozoo Chavis explains why there was only one Boozoo. july 5, 2006 A nthony Wilson “Boozoo” Chavis lived out his life in Lake Charles, on a few acres he immortalized in the song “Dog Hill.” Born in 1930, he spent his life farming and raising horses. In 1954 he recorded the seminal regional hit “Paper in My Shoe” for Eddie Shuler’s Goldband Records in Lake Charles. Chavis always contended that Shuler ripped him off, and Shuler always denied it. The experience left a bad taste in Chavis’s mouth, and for thirty years he didn’t record or perform. But in the 1980s, Chavis re-emerged from obscurity to international acclaim and is credited with revitalizing zydeco music. On April 29, 2001, just days after performing at the Dewey Balfa Cajun and Creole Heritage Week, Chavis suffered a heart attack and stroke while in Austin, Texas. He passed away six days later. Chavis was a walking powder keg of dynamite, both in conversation and on stage with his band the Majic Sounds. In the following exchange taken from a two-hour interview Don’t You Worry about Boozoo • 176 with Chavis in Lake Charles on February 26, 1999, Chavis talked about what made him the one and only Boozoo. How did you learn to play the accordion? You know you can’t hardly learn nobody how to play the accordion by telling them, “Do this and do that.” You ain’t going to learn like that. You got to look at your fingers and how they go. Then you can tell ’em, “Push and pull. Make it rhyme with you words.” It’s got to ding-dong there in your head. You got to make that accordion say what you want to say, the way that the song goes. You know, like “Susie-anna, Susie-anna, don’t you cry for me.” You heard that way back. [sings] “I’m going to Alabama with a banjo on my knee. Susie-anna, Susie-anna, don’t you cry for me.” Now make that accordion say that, and you can’t talk it. You got to rhyme it. I can’t read music, but that’s the only way I can explain you. You see, I got a son there. He tries to sing some of my songs, and I tell him, “You can’t sing that. Let me sing my own. You sing something that I can’t sing.” His voice is not there at all. You couldn’t sing my songs. You know what I’m saying? Because you might talk it. You’ve gotta let your music go up and down, let it rhyme. On my other record there, “You Gonna Look Like a Monkey When You Get Old,” [sings] “I can tell about your hair, you been fighting with that bear. You gonna look like a monkey when you get old.” See? You can’t say, “Hey, you gonna look like a monkey when you get old!” You talking it. You got to sing this thing. You’ve got to have a tone of voice. I explain that to the people, and it’s right. Yeah. You got to make the accordion say what you say, and you got to say it and sing it right, like the song goes. Did you learn to play the accordion just by watching others? Yeah, you watch. A lot of them come to the dance where I’m at and watch my songs and my fingers, and they pick up on my 177 • Don’t You Worry about Boozoo songs and they cut it. They change the words around. All that music they got there, you watch all of my music in there. I told them don’t be famous on my music. Be famous on your own. They can’t wait for one of my albums to come out so they can copy off of it. They want to make a rock beat with it. I keep up the tradition, the zydeco. I’m the only one playing zydeco. I’m the oldest one now living, except Bois Sec [Ardoin ]. The only one sticking with zydeco. Shit, that old messed up music. They ain’t doing nothing but messing that music up. That’s why when sometimes somebody asks me something, and I don...