Dickie Landry knew the look well. “When Clifton closed his eyes, he was in Nirvana. He was gone,” he recalled. A photographer and musician, Landry observed Clifton Chenier both through a camera lens and from the stage when, on occasion, he’d play saxophone with the King of Zydeco’s Red Hot Louisiana Band. The first time was in 1972, at The Dipsy-Doodle, a club near Grand Bois, La., in Lafourche Parish. Landry had brought his horn and asked regular saxophonist John Hart if he could sit in with the band. Hart asked Chenier, who turned to the microphone and told the crowd, “Well, we got a white boy from Cecilia who’s gonna try to play this zydeco.” Not wanting to overstay his welcome, Landry tried to leave after a few songs. Chenier wouldn’t hear of it. “Hey, white boy, stay on the stage. You are doing it right!”
Landry started sitting in with Chenier anytime he could, and on nights when he didn’t bring his sax, he’d bring his camera. And that’s how – on a subsequent night that same year, at Jay’s Lounge & Cockpit near Cankton, La., not too far from Chenier’s birthplace in Opelousas – he captured the look. Jay’s wasn’t a big club, but music, dancing and rooster fights packed it most weekends. Gumbo made with the losing fowl simmered on a stove. Cigarette smoke was thick and the one bulb hanging from the stage’s low-slung ceiling offered little light. But Landry raised his camera, framed Chenier and his brother Cleveland – one armored by a massive piano accordion, the other mid-stroke on a frottoir – and captured Nirvana. “There must be thousands of pictures of Clifton on stage, but most of them are with his crown and his eyes open, his big smile and everything. This is intense. He’s really into it. You can tell he’s into the music.”
‘The Year of Chenier’
In what has been dubbed “The Year of Chenier,” the photograph that Landry – a University of Louisiana at 鶹ýapp graduate – took that night has gone global as the cover art for "A Tribute to the King of Zydeco," released this summer by Valcour Records to coincide with what would have been Chenier’s 100th birthday. (Another UL 鶹ýapp alum, Grammy-nominated designer Megan Barra, designed the album’s cover). The star-studded disc – its opening track features The Rolling Stones with frontman Mick Jagger singing Chenier’s “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé” in surprisingly convincing Creole French – has placed the King back in the spotlight nearly 40 years after his death. More than anyone, Chenier defined zydeco, exported the musical genre from its southwest Louisiana cradle and, through live performances and commercial recordings, delivered its authenticity and power worldwide. , , , , , and , among others, published stories about the tribute and its honoree. – the venerable music magazine, not the band – did two stories, while family of newspapers in Louisiana did no fewer than six.
The tribute also has brought attention to UL 鶹ýapp. Valcour, an independent record label based in Eunice, La., worked with Chenier’s estate to create the at the University. It will support students studying zydeco accordion in the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Endowed Chair in Traditional Music. Proceeds from the album will benefit the fund. “We wanted to give back to the community that this music came from,” said Joel Savoy, who co-produced the album along with Steve Berlin of the rock group Los Lobos and John Leopold, former director of the Arhoolie Foundation. Savoy is Valcour’s founder and a member of one of the region’s most prominent musical families.
“We are at the epicenter of Cajun and zydeco music,” he told La Louisiane. “I’m in St. Landry Parish. This is where the music comes from. Clifton was born – what? – 15 miles from here, maybe? That music is in the air. It’s everywhere. You can’t avoid it. And I think that’s one of the things that makes South Louisiana so magical. It’s gonna get to you. It’s always on the radio. You hear it at parties. You hear it outside. You hear it in restaurants. You hear it everywhere. It’s just inescapable.”
‘No Zydeco until Clifton’
So, too, is Chenier’s influence on American music.
In his new biography of Chenier, longtime music journalist and cultural advocate Todd Mouton compared the King’s seminal influence to that of reggae’s Bob Marley or blues icons Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Each “forged a new sound.” Chenier “indelibly changed the world of music and culture,” Mouton wrote. Other commentators have compared Chenier to jazz’s Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. In an interview with Spin magazine, singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who appears on the tribute, likened Chenier to Bill Monroe. He “invented an American art form. There was no bluegrass before him. There was no zydeco until Clifton.”
Yet when Chenier was born a century ago on June 25, 1925, the newspaper in nearby Opelousas, La., published no birth announcement for him. That was typical. In that time and place, the children of Black sharecroppers – even those who would go on to change music forever – received no such welcome. But when Chenier died 62 years later, on Dec. 12, 1987, news of his death flashed around the globe and was carried in publications in the far-flung places where he had played and where his music had found disciples. He had achieved a kingly status that he dared others to dispute. Chenier had taken “la-la” – the Creole house dance music of his rural upbringing that he had heard his father, an accordionist, and others like Amédé Ardoin and Sidney Babineaux play – and infused it with horns, organs and guitars and declared it “zydeco,” a derivation of les haricots, French for “snapbeans.” (One of his signature songs, “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé,” translates to “no salt in my snapbeans,” a reference to hard times.)
Chenier’s music was, at its core, the blues, but his blues was different than anything that came from Chicago or the Mississippi Delta. He was both a traditionalist and a stylist, blending the musical forms of his native southwest Louisiana, Creole and Cajun, with soul, country, big band, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. He sang in French. And his massive, 40-pound piano accordion, backed by his brother Cleveland’s frottoir (a vest-style corrugated metal rubboard played with beer bottle caps that Chenier himself had designed), gave the music the signature textures that he would carry with him to dancehalls and nightclubs close to home – the Blue Angel, the Bon Ton Rouey, Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki, the Casino Club and Willie’s Purple – and to places far removed – Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Royal Albert Hall in London, among others. At Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival, he told the mostly francophone crowd, “I speak French, too, but it’s a different language.”
In the 1940s, Clifton and Cleveland honed their craft at house dances throughout southwest Louisiana and neighboring Texas. “They didn’t have no clubs,” Clifton Chenier told Ann Savoy in a 1984 interview. (Savoy is the mother of Joel Savoy; she and her husband, Marc, are both acclaimed musicians and cultural forces). “They’d move all the furniture off to the side, clear the room up and they’d dance in there.” Chenier’s son, C.J., further explained to NPR: “You would pay a nickel to go in or something like that, and they’d serve fish and zydeco beans, les haricots. That was a Friday night party. You know, that’s where it started – just an accordion and the washboard and a whole bunch of people in the house having a party.” The brothers moved first to Lake Charles, La., then to southeast Texas, where Clifton got a job at an oil refinery. Laid off, he decided to pursue music full time. The brothers traveled the “chitlin circuit,” a network of juke joints and nightclubs with a primarily Black clientele.
His first recording contract came in 1954. “Louisiana Stomp” and “Clifton’s Blues” for Elko were among the earliest recorded examples of zydeco. The following year, he joined Specialty Records, which released his first hit, “Ay-Te Te Fee.” Chenier would go on to record for several other labels, where he rubbed shoulders and performed on package shows with some of the great names of R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll: Etta James, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry.
Chenier’s national breakthrough came in 1963 when Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records heard him perform in Houston and recorded him the next day. Strachwitz, who founded the California-based label to spotlight non-mainstream music, went on to release more than a dozen Chenier records, several of which – Louisiana Blues and Zydeco, King of the Bayous and Bon Ton Roulet – are considered masterpieces. The discs captured Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band at their peak and introduced them to their widest audience yet.
By the 1970s, with classic recordings and countless road miles under his belt, Chenier had become more than a seasoned ambassador for Louisiana music. He was a self-proclaimed king and an acknowledged showman, often appearing on stage in a crown with bulky costume rhinestones set in its arches. Sometimes, he wore a cape over his business suit, and rings would reflect stage lights so it appeared, as he squeezed and released the accordion’s bellows and his hands danced across its keys and buttons, that his fingers were on fire. But beyond costuming, Chenier cloaked himself in an unabashed confidence that emerged in interviews and peppered the blistering four-hour performances that were typical. A Chenier show, “was like leaving Earth for a little while,” remembered Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin. A co-producer of the tribute album, he saw the King perform in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Added Grammy Award-winning musician John Cleary, who appears on the tribute: “He’d be up there, sweating in a suit and tie, a giant crown on his head – and the groove was relentless. He’d be wailing a slow blues, a waltz and then bust into straight zydeco.”
Chenier’s musical dexterity enabled him to reach live audiences in ways other musicians could not, and zydeco’s embrace of different musical forms offered Chenier a freedom that he fully exploited on stage. “Whatever they ask for, if I know it, that’s it, we play it,” he said. “It makes me feel good if I make them feel good.”
Dickie Landry produced a blues showcase in 1978 at Carnegie Hall and insisted that Chenier be on the bill. Though initially reluctant, other producers relented, and the King joined a lineup that included John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Honeyboy Edwards. Technical difficulties and other hiccups delayed the show; Chenier didn’t take the stage until 11:30 p.m., some three and a half hours after it had started. In an interview with La Louisiane, Landry said Chenier walked out on one of the nation’s most storied stages, wearing his crown and a red suit, looking “like a king,” only to be greeted by tepid applause from an audience that was exhausted. “And the first words out of his mouth, he says, ‘I know I’m supposed to play some zydeco tonight, but I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the song ‘Jolie Blonde.’” A few bars into the waltz – revered as the “Cajun National Anthem” – and the audience was up dancing in the aisles. In its review of the show, The New York Times noted the instant connection between the King and his court, concluding that “Mr. Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana Band played the best blues of the night.” For the remainder of his days, Chenier called Landry “the man who brought me to Carnegie Hall.”
Toward the end of his life, Chenier sat down for an interview with journalist and author Ben Sandmel in which he reflected on his beginnings and the long climb to musical immortality. It all seemed preordained, he said. “I never thought I would hit Europe, but I know one thing: the way I was playin’ that accordion, it was going to go somewhere. I mean, I ain’t bragging about it, but I knew what I had goin’ was goin’ to go somewhere, and that’s what it did. I been to all kind of countries, man, and what makes me feel good, every country I hit, I ain’t never heard nobody say, ‘I don’t like this music.’ Never.
“All I can tell the world is this,” he continued. “Be what you are, and do what you think is best, and always have confidence in your own self. And that’s it, that’s who I am. If I feel like I’m going to do something, I’m gonna do it, and I’m gonna do it right.”
‘A Red-Hot Rocker’
Based on the plaudits he received while he lived and after he died, Chenier must have done something right. His album I’m Here earned a Grammy Award in 1984; he was the first Creole musician to receive American music’s most prestigious honor. That same year, the National Endowment for the Arts named him a National Heritage Fellow. Bogalusa Boogie, a 1976 Arhoolie recording, entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Library of Congress placed it on the National Recording Registry in 2016. He earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, the same year as The Beatles.
But perhaps the greatest measure of Chenier’s resonance were the musicians he inspired, near and far. Close to home, Buckwheat Zydeco (the stage name of Stanley Dural Jr.), Terrance Simien and Nathan Williams Sr. all have cited him as an influence. C.J. Chenier backed his dad for nine years as a saxophonist and today carries his father’s musical legacy as leader of the Red Hot Louisiana Band. In an interview with La Louisiane, C.J. Chenier recalled advice his dad once imparted: “When you get on stage, when you play that accordion, you play it. You don’t play with it.”
And, as the roster of musical stars on A Tribute to the King of Zydeco shows, respect for Chenier transcends any single genre, mirroring the broad influences that shaped his own sound. “I like it all,” he once said. Appropriately, the tribute pairs guest artists with stalwarts of South Louisiana music: Lucinda Williams with Tommy McLain; Charley Crockett and Nathan Williams Sr.; Taj Mahal and Keith Frank; Steve Earle with Anthony Dopsie; Jon Cleary with Curley Taylor; Marcia Ball and Geno Delafose; Jimmie Vaughan with Johnny Nicholas and Steve Riley; Shannon McNally and Molly Tuttle with Keith Frank; Ruben Ramos with Los Texmaniacs and Augie Meyers; and C.J. Chenier and David Hidalgo. The album concludes with C.J. Chenier – backed by Sonny Landreth, once a member of the Red Hot Louisiana Band – singing “I’m Coming Home,” one of Clifton Chenier’s best known and most emotional songs. In its review, Spin magazine said, collectively, the tracks are “a fiery run through blues, swamp-boogie and jump-jive, with a handful of ballads for changes of pace. It manages to stay true to the honoree, without anyone imitating him.”
Then there’s the opening track: “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé” by The Rolling Stones, one of the most durable and legendary bands in rock history. Chenier first recorded the song in 1965, and Stones frontman Mick Jagger tackles its Creole French lyrics with ease, while Keith Richards’ Telecaster dances seamlessly with Steve Riley’s accordion. Spin called the cut a “red-hot rocker, arguably as smoking as anything the band had done in years. Maybe more so.” The Guardian, a British daily newspaper, said the song “might be the loosest, rawest Stones recording since Exile on Main Street,” released in 1972. Guitarist and producer CC Adcock, who oversaw the Stones session (as well as the Williams-McLain duet on “Release Me”), told veteran music columnist Herman Fuselier that the song gave him “frissons” – chill bumps.
But it almost didn’t happen.
‘The One’
Mick Jagger first heard a Clifton Chenier record in 1965 during The Rolling Stones’ second tour of the United States. “I’d never heard the accordion in blues before,” the British rocker recalled in The Atlantic. In another interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he said what he heard from Chenier was “blues, an interesting, different kind of blues.” In a 2020 conversation, Jagger said, “Clifton was a great influence on me. I love the way he just grabs a blues number and adapts it to his style.”
In 1978, Dickie Landry was in Los Angeles performing with the Philip Glass Ensemble, and he went to a house party where Jagger was among the guests. Hearing Landry’s distinctive accent, the rocker asked him where he was from. When he replied “South Louisiana,” Jagger responded: “Clifton Chenier, the best band I ever heard, and I’d like to hear him again.”
As luck would have it, Chenier was in Los Angeles too, performing at a benefit at Verbum Dei Jesuit High School. Los Angeles had an enclave of Creole expats who had left Louisiana during World War II for job opportunities in California’s defense industry, and Chenier was a regular attraction there. Landry called Chenier and told him he was bringing Jagger to the next night’s show. “Who’s that?” the King asked of one of the world’s most famed musicians. “He’s with The Rolling Stones,” Landry replied. “Oh yeah. The magazine. They did an article on me,” Chenier said.
The next night, when he and Landry arrived at the school gymnasium, Jagger hesitated. He didn’t want to be mobbed, and he didn’t want to take attention away from Chenier. Landry assured him it would be OK. As they entered and throughout the evening, no one seemed to recognize Jagger and, at night’s end, crowd members brushed passed him to get Chenier’s autograph.
Jagger and Landry next saw each other more than four decades later, when The Rolling Stones performed at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Jagger, Landry and producer CC Adcock, who was friends with Jagger’s children and also had connections with Keith Richards, had lunch with others the next day at Antoine’s, the historic restaurant in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Jagger reminisced about that night at Verbum Dei, but Landry and Adcock had the future in mind.
As plans for A Tribute to the King of Zydeco were taking shape, co-producers Joel Savoy and Steve Berlin had asked Adcock for ideas on what musicians might agree to appear. The Rolling Stones – whose blues, early rock and R&B influences make them kindred spirits with Chenier – came to Adcock’s mind immediately. The producers didn’t hold their breath. In their 60-plus years as a group, the band had never done a tribute album before. “The Stones are usually the worshipped, not the worshippers,” Herman Fuselier wrote in The Acadiana Advocate newspaper.
Adcock was undeterred. “I just sensed that it was something kinky enough that they’d be into,” Adcock told American Songwriter. He first approached Richards’ camp but heard nothing definitive back.
The lunch at Antoine’s was his chance. He mentioned the tribute to Jagger, who instantly said, “I want to sing something.”
A few weeks later, Jagger asked what songs had been chosen by the tribute’s other participants. The list surprised him – “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé” was absent. Adcock recalled: “He’s like, ‘Isn’t that the one that whole genre is named after? If the Stones are gonna do one, shouldn’t we do the f---ing one, man?’”
Having Jagger on board was a coup, but getting the remaining Stones – Richards and Ronnie Wood – in place took several more months. In the meantime, production on the album continued, Savoy told La Louisiane. By December, the record was at the pressing plant without The Rolling Stones on it. “The test pressings had been approved, the artwork was finished, jackets were going to print. And then we got word that The Rolling Stones wanted to be on the record. So, we stopped everything. We completely re-sequenced, redid the artwork. We had to remaster, do new lacquers, everything. We basically just stopped and redid everything to be able to include their track,” Savoy said.
Sometimes, you can get what you want.
‘That Was Clifton Chenier’
“There’s no bigger star on this earth than my daddy,” an unapologetic C.J. Chenier told La Louisiane. “There might be some better known than him but, to me, Clifton Chenier is the Almighty.
“When it comes to zydeco, I don’t think he could not matter,” he continued. “Man, who knows what this music would be right now, or if it would be, because somebody had to take it and bring it other places for other people to hear. You know, it was contained in Louisiana for a long time, and it was a local party, but he took that local party and made it worldwide.”
As “The Year of Chenier” continues, more celebrations are forthcoming. A tribute concert is planned for September at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in 鶹ýapp; it will feature C.J. Chenier and is already sold out. In November, Smithsonian Folkways and the Arhoolie Foundation will release a box set on CD and vinyl. Its 67 tracks will include 19 previously unreleased cuts. (Earlier this year, Arhoolie, Valcour and Smithsonian released a 7-inch, 45 rpm vinyl recording that featured both Chenier’s and The Rolling Stones’ versions of “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé.” Visual artist , a UL 鶹ýapp graduate, designed the cover.)
In Chenier’s centennial year, the tribute album and original releases are delivering the potency of his zydeco to fresh audiences and earning new subjects for the King. Dickie Landry saw the power of Chenier’s music firsthand many times throughout their friendship. He recalled a party he attended in Moscow, the capital of what was then the Soviet Union, while he was there for a theater production. “I went to this apartment, and they were playing rock ‘n’ roll, and nobody was dancing. So, I pulled out a cassette of Clifton Chenier.” Soon, “they were dancing on the tables.” It was Carnegie Hall all over again – with a little South Louisiana house party thrown in for good measure. (As Chenier once noted, “If you can’t dance to zydeco, you can’t dance, period!”)
“He was Clifton, wherever he went” – revered at home, respected globally and confident in his influence, always – Landry said. “I’ll quote him by saying: ‘If you’re going to be something, be something.’ If you’ll be nothing, be nothing.’ That was his motto. He wanted to be known. It was a joy to see him perform. It was a joy to speak to him. And putting that crown on his head and going, ‘I’m the king’ – how can you dispute that?
“That was Clifton Chenier, king of zydeco.”
Photo caption: (top) Clifton Chenier plays the first “Tribute to Cajun Music,” a 1974 concert in Blackham Coliseum that later became Festivals Acadiens et Créole. Photo credit: (top) Philip Gould / The Image Bank Unreleased via Getty Images
