Customer Reviews

The Best of Louisiana Music: Over 60 Minutes of the Best Mardi Gras Party Music!

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This 1993 release comes from Rounder Records, the brainchild of university students Marian Leighton-Levy, Ken Irwin and Bill Nowlin who, in 1970, decided to launch a label operating out of Cambridge, Massachusetts (currently based in Burlington), with special attention paid to "roots" music. Once established, they created the specialty subsidiaries Zoe, Heartbeat, Bullseye Blues, Flying Fish and Philo, each dealing with specific genres like Folk. Eventually, Rounder became one of the largest independent record labels in the U.S. and, for a while, also served as the major distributor/central sales coordinator for upwards of 400 other indie labels, before cutting back in the mid-1990s.

Here, they pull together 19 happy Louisiana tunes by some of the best-known New Orleans artists this side of Fats Domino, with Beausoleil kicking it off with Bon Temps Rouler [Let The Good Times Roll]. Brothers Michael (fiddle and vocals) and David Doucet (guitar and vocals), percussionists Tommy Ales, Billy Ware, and Tommy Alesi, accordionist Jimmy Breaux, and bassist/fiddler Mitchell Reed, operating out of Lafayette, is one of the most popular such bands in the region.

You also get a re-recording by the New Orleans group The Meters of one of their best R&B hits, Look-A Py Py, which became a # 11 in 1970 on the Josie label, the magnificent Soul Queen Of New Orleans Irma Thomas, born in Ponchatoula, doing the Doc Pomus tune, I Never Fool Nobody But Me, while the great Aaron Neville, also from New Orleans, checks in with Mojo Hannah. And on and on, delivering some of the happiest, toe-tapping music you will ever hear on one disc.

You won't want to miss the bouncy Les flammes d'enfer (The Flames Of Hell) by Eddie LeJeune, D.L. Menard And Ken Smith, and the slow, melancholy J'aurais di t'aimer (I Should Have Loved You) by Jimmie C. Newman & Cajun Country, both done in the inimitable Cajun French dialect brought to Louisiana from Acadia (now New Brunswick/Nova Scotia in Canada
(our loss thanks to the British).

There are no liner notes, but there is a complete contents discography showing the original Rounder label numbers and, where applicable, the album title concerned. The sound quality is excellent.

What a terrific CD...R&B, zydeco, Cajun. Just a great hour of enjoyment. Mostly fast, toe-tapping music, but a few slower ones, too.

I wish you have included a list of the songs of the CD and have some samples to listen before deciding whether to purchase it or not. I have just bought 3 Zydeco's CDs for my dad's 85th birthday in March next year. And I am ordering the Mardi Gras in New Orleans 2 as well as the Mardi Gras Essentials after listen to some of the samples. I like the songs - they will surely entertain the guests as well as my dad. I am preparing a Mardi Gras theme for my dad's birthday party.