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Lafayette native "Lil' Buck" Sinegal's real name was Paul Alton Senegal. “Sinegal” was a spelling error on his first passport delivered just before he embarked on a European tour with Clifton Chenier. He kept the name. His nickname "Lil' Buck" (for little buckwheat) was due to his short stature. Born in 1944 and raised in a French creole-speaking family, he got his first guitar as a reward from a blind uncle he used to help picking cotton during school holidays. Since then his never left it until he finally quit the blues land in 2019 at age 75.
Early he started playing for musicians like Katie Webster (his first time in a recording studio), Barbara Lynn, Carol Fran, Percy Sledge, Millie Jackson, James "Thunderbird" Davis, Lee Dorsey or Joe Tex. As a session guitarist for the Excello Records label, he worked with Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Rockin' Dopsie Sr. Altogether, Sinegal would have recorded on some 300 sessions since the late 1950s !
In the 1960s, he was in the Top Cats, a 15-piece (!) rhythm'n'blues band featuring one Stanley Dural, future Buckwheat Zydeco, on organ, which was quite successful in the club circuit of Louisiana. In 1969, he joined Clifton Chenier's band. “My uncle ran the Blue Angel Club and it's there that I met Clifton Chenier for the fist time”, he recalls. “I had just left the Top Cats, I was free like a bird. Clifton was at the bar, I said hello and he asked : 'Are you the one they call “Lil' Buck” ?' I nodded yes. 'I've heard about you, he said, I know the music you played with your band... l'm gonna get up on stage in a little while, you can join us if you feel like it.' We stayed together for fifteen years !”After Chenier's passing, he toured with zydeco artists Buckwheat Zydeco, Rockin' Dopsie Sr or Fernest Arceneaux in the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s he was working with producer-pianist Allen Toussaint for the NYNO label. This allowed him to record and release his first album, “The Buck Starts Here”, in 1999, a definite blues work produced and co-written by Toussaint.
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Sinegal (left) with Bucwheat Zydeco (right)
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In the beginning of the 2000s, he teamed up with legendary veteran, blues pianist Henry Gray. Himself reached a legendary status and was invited to play with an amazing number of musicians, in numerous festivals and in more or less ephemeral or occasional bands like the Lil' Band O' Gold, the Cowboy Stew Blues Revue (with C.C. Adcock(, the Blue Monday Allstars, the Top Cats (reformed) the Buckaroos, the McComb-Veazey Allstars…His long fixture with Chenier and Buckwheat Zydeco led him to be categorized as a zydeco guitarist, but he always claimed he could play all genres, but was before all a bluesman. This album, released in 2002, demonstrates it magnificently : except his own and excellent “Shakin' The Zydeco”, even Chenier's “Highway Blues” is much more a blues than a Zydeco. And all the other tracks are blues. And blues of the best kind !
This time Sinegal wrote eight of the 14 titles, and is backed by an excellent band where one will recognizes Buckwheat Zydeco's bassist Lee Allan Zeno, and discover the appealing keyboardist-accordionist Keith Clements and the nice harmonicist Andy Cornett.His refined guitar style appears from the opening title track “Bad Situation” and goes on through some outstanding songs like the soulful “The Blues Is Killing Me”, the swampy “Pork Chops & Red Beans”, Guitar Slim's “Well, I Done Got Over It”, the soul jazzy instrumental “Junior”, the funky “Mr. Landlord”, the rocking “Woman” and a lively version of “Further On Up The Road” with great piano by Clements. This song, first recorded in 1957 by Bobby "Blue" Bland, is credited to Joe Medwick Veasey & Don Robey (or Roby aka Deadric Malone, songwriter, producer and owner of the Peacock, Back Beat and Duke Records labels), but was most likely written by Veasey and Johnny Copeland.
But the highlights of the album are certainly his exciting fast funky and muscular version of B.B. King's “Why I Sing The Blues”, and his Masters of the Blues Medley comprising a fine cover of Albert King's “I'll Play The Blues For You” switching to a sharp rendition of Albert Collins' “Cold, Cold Feeling”. (Unless “Masters of the Blues Medley” was misplaced on the rear cover and was supposed to include the B.B. King song...)
This album has a typical Louisiana appealing sound and Sinegal is a great singer and a hell of a good guitarist. Don't miss it ! ♦
Interviews & docs
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Sinegal (left) with Corey Ledet (right)
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The Zydeco years
Sinegal not often solo
■ With The Blue Monday Allstars (Marc Broussard, Sinegal, Henry Gray, Carol Fran, Smokehouse Porter & Miss Mamie), Lafayette, 2019 : https://youtu.be/_18RVAMDDZA ■ With the Cowboy Stew Blues Revue (C.C. Adcock & Curley Taylor), Freret Street Festival, 2017 :
■ With the Cajun Roosters & Magnolia Sisters, American Cajun Blues & Zydeco Fest., Germany, 2015 :
■ The McComb-Veazey Allstars (Sinegal, Lee Allan Zeno, Greg Gordon, Lloyd Richard, Eric Adcock, Bobby Allen…), Lafayette, 2014 :
■ Cypress Lake Studios, Louisiana, 2014 :
■ With the Lil' Band O' Gold (musicians listed below the video), Lafayette, 2011-2012 :
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| Lil' Buck Sinegal, 1944-2019 |
■ With Lazy Lester, "They Call Me Lazy", Lafayette, 2019 : https://youtu.be/B4iysaqXFF0
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