Customer Reviews

Jolie Blonde

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When I think of authentic Louisiana music, I am brought back time and again to this CD. The Hackberry Ramblers are the real deal...what you would hear if you were traveling through the bayou country 40 years ago. It evokes the feeling of a dusty slat floor under your feet, in a little joint in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday night, hot and humid air being stirred by old creaky ceiling fans. The screen door bangs open and shut as the regulars come in to join the party. No electric instruments here -- just the purest Cajun voice singing patois and the songs passed from generation to generation. A drum, a string bass, a squeeze box, a fiddle. Oh, how everyone would stomp, whirl, sway and skip to this music. Full of pure Cajun soul.

Cajun music is the sexiest and most raw outside of pure Delta blues. This recording is Cajun music at its finest. It is a compilation of the group's recordings from 1933 to the early 90's, and they've always kept it pure and true to the real roots of Cajun music. It's not rocking rowdy get drunk and catch beads at the Mardi Gras parade kind of music. It's the music of a culture and people that has sadly in recent times been fused with blues, rock, and country. I live in Louisiana and lament the loss of the pure form of Cajun music. Thankfully, the Hackberry Ramblers are recorded for all time to remind me of what Cajun music REALLY IS.

If you want Cajun music in its purest form, like it was originally meant to be played, listened and danced to, buy this CD. My personal favorite is Jolie Blonde...sexy, sensual, a drawl of a song, perfect to slowly dance to. You'll smell the Louisiana night as the record unfolds.

If you are Cajun, this album will completely captivate your "ethnic center". I am, yet this was a gift to my husband, who is not. He loves every song and says that it is impossible to be still while this music is playing!! He was listening with his ear phones and brought the player in so that I could listen. I had a hard time giving it back. Just sit back and enjoy this album. It will take you to a place you will love!

Well, it is about time that I started to review some of the work of the good old boys and girls from the bayous down in Cajun country. Places like Lafayette and Lake Charles evoke memories of time and place in Cajun musical history. You know at the edges of the places where the likes of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis learned their crafts. And places where all kinds of mixes of music and races blended to form unique sounds all their own. Accordions, washboards, fiddles, guitars and what ever came to hand on those whiskey-drenched Saturday nights.

And on those nights come names like Clifton Chenier and Booboo Chavis that form the black influenced strand of the music. The Hackberry Ramblers and the likes of Waylon Thibodeaux form another, the good old white boys. French Acadian exiles, English "swamp foxes" of undetermined origin, black escaped slaves, "poor white trash"- it is all there mixed in one form or another. For the most part there were no serious conscious attempts to mix the strands but how could the intermixing influences be avoided in that small isolated area of southwest Louisiana. And all under the umbrella of what I call the "French blues". Get your dancing slippers on.

Back in the early days of Cajun music there was something of s split between the "purists" who insisted that the fiddle was the central driving force behind the music and those who argued that the accordion was that force. I take my stand with those who argue for the accordion but if you want a very strong argument for the fiddle then your stop is at old time player Luderin Darbone's Hackberry Ramblers. This group was practically a Cajun institution at the Saturday barns dances and other venues in the old days. The composition of the group, and its popularity, changed over time by this was always easy material to listen to. And to get up to dance to, as well. Listen to the virtual title track Cajun anthem "Jolie Blonde", "Grand Texas", "Colinda", "Fais Pas" and "Louisiana Waltz" if you want to know the place where Cajun intersected Western Swing and a million other influences that this band incorporated in its repertoire from its inception in 1933.

Again here I go. BEAUTIFUL. COOL. GREAT. AWESOME. PERFECT. It is once again the RAMBLERS in their older years (60's and 70's). But they are as great here as when they were young and in their 20's. I find this CD to be a great find and say get it. It is a must to all who are RAMBLERS fans.