→ Thanks to L.C.
The best kept secret of the Cheniers
Many Louisiana family clans take pride in several generations of famous artists. Most of those families (Creole or Cajun) can trace their ancestry way back in the 17th or 18th century, before the “Louisiana purchase” (1803) and bear French names : Arceneaux, Ardoin, Balfa, Fontenot, Broussard, Chavis, Frank, Carrier, Delafosse, Lejeune, Cormier, Ledet, Savoy, Williams, Rubin (aka Dopsie), Neville or… Chenier.
→ Thanks to L.C.
Forest's hot harmonica and powerful imaginary vocals are running energetically over excellent guitar and keyboard work, and tight job of always perfectly chosen bass-drums sections.
The songs cover a large range of styles ― rock'n'roll, blues and R'n'B, Zydeco and even a few jazz-rock infused numbers ―, and it's not surprising that for over 40 years Forest has been a New Orleans resident, a city where one doesn't joke with groove and letting the good times roll.
His career could have stopped abruptly in 2008 though. He fell some 35 feet down from a tree and suffered a triple fracture of the back that could have left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Fortunately his strong will plus good medical care helped him to avoid such an unfortunate fate. As a consequence, he now walks with a cane and sits most of the time during his shows, as it appears in most of the videos proposed below.
→ Express reviews of some albums I listened recently
Bobby Rush - All My Love For You (2023)
A prolific songwriter, Rush signs all the tracks (including “TV Mama”, not to be mistaken with the same and often covered title from Lou Willie Turner aka Luella Brown, Big Joe Turner's wife). Two lively titles stand out , “I'm Free” and “I'm The One”, about blues music, which sound largely autobiographical.
→ Thanks to L.C.
Very young he was working with his family in the cane fields. At the age of 18, he moved to New Orleans where he worked in various jobs for a couple of years before returning home in 1948 when, inspired by Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, he began taking guitar lessons from a cousin.
“The kind of blues I’m playin’, now they call it Texas style”, he explained. “But we called it the country blues, you know… It’s the style of picking, with your fingers and all that. It wasn’t any bottle-necking, like Mississippi blues.”
→ Thanks to L. C.
The miraculous album
Born in April 1937 in St. Martinville, Louisiana, in a Creole French speaking family, Hypolite did not learn English until going to school at the age of 6. He had a rough youth, obliged to drop out after the fourth grade to go out and work : from about 12 years old he cut sugar cane, dug sweet potatoes or picked okra and cotton.
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Pete Seeger |
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