Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings

Instrumental Music

290 instrumental Music Oakdale Carrière Perrodin Two-Step y Apparently played on a diatonic C accordion, this is a melodic analogue of the song known as “The Perrodin Two-Step.” Considered a tour-de-force, the “Perrodin” is known as one of the more di∞cult accordion instrumentals, and it was and continues to be a favorite at accordion contests in southern Louisiana. Although more often associated with the Cajun repertoire, Carrière’s performance of this song reflects the intertwined nature of Cajun and Creole instrumental music in the early part of the twentieth century . Perrodin is also a common surname in St. Landry and Evangeline Parishes. Evangeline Band The Evangeline Band of St. Martinville was a full dance orchestra of the sort found in small towns across the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Selected to perform for the 1936 National Folk Festival in Dallas, they traveled from St. Martinville with nineteen members, including a retinue of dancers. “Acadian Air” No. 1 and No. 2 y These two songs, called (facetiously?) “Acadian Airs” by the Lomaxes, are typical brass band dance numbers of the sort that would have been in vogue in the 1920s and 1930s. The music of popular bandleaders such as Paul Whiteman would have been readily accessible via radio at the time, as would have sheet music of popular songs. instrumental music 291 The arrangement and relative complexity of these songs suggest that they were probably played (or at least originally learned) from commercially available sheet music. Ellis Evans and Jimmy Lewis Harmonica Fais Do Do y Although the vernacular instrumental music of southern Louisiana is often identified with the fiddle and accordion, a number of recordings feature the harmonica in the role of the lead instrument. Both are diatonic instruments, and the harmonica likely functioned as a natural substitute for the accordion, or vice versa. As is also the habit of diatonic accordionists, Ellis Evans seems to be playing a C-tuned instrument in the key of G, which allows access to the bluesy flatted seventh of the resulting G mixolydian scale.1 Horace Foreman Census records indicate that Horace Foreman was born in or around 1849 in Opelousas, Louisiana. From Opelousas he moved to Lafayette, where he married his cousin Joanna Foreman on June 20, 1866. He lists his employment as “field hand” at the time, though he also lists a relatively large estate of three hundred dollars. By 1900 Foreman was living in Morse and was remarried to a woman thirty years his junior, Aurelia Abshire, with whom he had a large family. He recorded three fiddle tunes for the Lomaxes, all of which are standard American fiddle tunes that would have been current in the nineteenth as well as the early twentieth centuries. He died in 1935 at the age of eighty-five, a year after the Lomaxes recorded him. Old Joe Clark y This is a variant of the archetypal American fiddle and play-party tune “Old Joe Clark,” similar to Wayne Perry’s version discussed later in this chapter. Dance Boatman Dance y Many songs considered part of the American “old-time,” or traditional fiddle and banjo string band, repertoire have deep links to the blackface minstrel songs of the midnineteenth century. “Dance Boatman Dance,” purportedly written by Dan Emmet, the 1. John Lomax states, “This unusual harp playing was done by Ellis Evans of Lloyd, Louisiana, assisted and seconded by Jimmy Lewis of the same place.” 292 traditional music in coastal louisiana blackface minstrel and composer of “Dixie,” was among the first early hit songs of the minstrel stage. Originally written in eye dialect, the lyrics of the song depicted a frolicking , musical African American roustabout on the Ohio River—black roustabouts being a minor obsession for minstrels and other nineteenth-century mediators of African American culture (see, for instance, John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Song of the Negro Boatmen” and my note to John Bray’s “Coonjine, Roustabouts, Coonjine”). While Emmet may indeed have written the words associated with this song (published in 1843 by Charles H. Keith in Boston), he likely appropriated the melody of a traditional song or fused the melodies of various songs together. He was the grandson of an Irish immigrant, and adaptations of Irish airs to American musical style formed the musical substructure of much minstrel performance. While many of the shenanigans of the minstrel stage were pure fantasy...