{"id":5391,"date":"2015-03-30T15:50:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T15:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=5391"},"modified":"2015-03-30T15:53:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T15:53:41","slug":"a-language-of-song-the-cajuns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2015\/03\/30\/a-language-of-song-the-cajuns\/","title":{"rendered":"A Language of Song: The Cajuns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The series A Language of Song<\/strong>\u00a0features the words of Samuel Charters and the recordings he produced as preserved in\u00a0The\u00a0<\/a>Samuel and Ann Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Connecticut.\u00a0The series is a tribute to the great Samuel Charters \u2013 poet, novelist, translator of Swedish poets, and renowned scholar of the blues, jazz, and musical culture of the African diaspora. \u00a0<\/span>Samuel Charters died on March 18 at the age of 85.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"cajunsfiddlepic\"<\/a>In the second post in the series,\u00a0together with a personal remembrance by friend and UConn Libraries staff member Nicholas Eshelman, Mr. Charters describes his recording sessions in Louisiana with Cajun and Zydeco musicians including\u00a0the great accordion player Nathan Abshire. <\/span><\/p>\n

The sessions were released on a series of record albums including <\/span>The Cajuns – Vol.1: Balfa Brothers Orchestra With Nathan Abshire<\/strong>\u00a0(SNTF 643 Sonet, 1973). \u00a0All of the recordings were done at the La Louisianne Studio, Lafayette, Louisiana. \u00a0The Charters Archives holds\u00a0the recordings and documents relating to the recordings<\/a>, such as the studio log sheets.<\/p>\n

Sonet Grammofon was interested in a wide range of American music, and over a period of several years I recorded a number of Cajun groups. The trips were usually in connection with other recordings that I was doing western Louisiana – often Rocking Dopsie – but also Bill Haley and the Comets, since I traveled to Nashville or Muscle Shoals for his albums. There was an initial double album set titled The Cajuns, and a number of individual Cajun albums, including a documentary of the famed Mamou Cajun Hour radio broadcasts from Fred\u2019s Lounge on the main street of Mamou.\"Cajunscover\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In December, 1972 I finished a session with Haley in Nashville and traveled on to Lafayette, Louisiana to do a broad documentation of the musical scene there. I worked with four groups, and rounded out the sessions with instrumental duets by talented accordion player Bessyl Duhon and a guitarist. The sessions captured exciting music that could not be duplicated, though I was able to record several other excellent groups a few years later. For this album the Balfa Brothers recorded with the great accordion player Nathan Abshire and the superb two violin team of Dewey Balfa and Merlin Fontenot, and on later recordings with the group neither Abshire or Fontenot took part. The Ardoin Brothers recorded with young Gus Ardoin playing the accordion, and he was tragically killed in a road accident only a few months later.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"cajunslist\"<\/a>I first met Sam Charters in 2001 when my wife, Kristin, took a job at UConn that included curatorship of the\u00a0Samuel and Ann Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture<\/a>. Meeting Sam was a big deal for me because my brothers and I had grown up listening to the records he produced, pouring over his liner notes and learning more from his great book, The Country Blues<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0This was in the 1970\u2019s when finding the blues, jazz and folk LPs we loved in a small Pennsylvania town was nearly impossible, as was finding any good information on how the music came to be. This made every record we did scrounge up something \u00a0precious, to be listened to over and over, so for this I felt I owed him a great debt and was more than a little nervous about meeting him.<\/p>\n

Sam and Ann had invited us to their home, and we were privileged for this to happen many more times over the years.\u00a0\u00a0I realized I could spend all evening asking him questions like \u201cDid you know Gary Davis?\u201d \u201cWhat was Moe Asch \/ Dewey Balfa \/ John Fahey like?\u201d \u00a0And not just because he always graciously answered but also because there was no end to the list of remarkable people he\u2019d known, produced, helped or counted as friends. But by then he\u2019d given enough interviews in his life\u00a0\u00a0that he’d grown weary of them and I certainly didn\u2019t want to pester him, in his own living room, with questions he\u2019d been asked thousands of times before. Besides, it was just as fun to talk to him and Ann about other things, such the differences between national styles of aquavit (with samples!) or to hear stories about his hunting caribou in Alaska (for subsistence, not sport) \u00a0or of the colorful artistic and literary types he and Ann knew in Sweden.<\/p>\n

I had only known of Sam as a record producer and\u00a0\u00a0scholar of folk music and jazz. I soon learned that he was also a novelist, poet, translator, excellent classical pianist, jug, \"cajunsabishire\"washboard, banjo and clarinet player, Korean war veteran, art collector,\u00a0\u00a0jazz musician and literary scholar. And I’ve probably left some things out.\u00a0\u00a0He was also tireless.<\/p>\n

Into his 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s he traveled extensively and seemed to never stop working or finding new additions to the Charters’ Archive. Crazy things would happen to him in his travels. On a trip to Scotland to visit his ancestral home town, he stopped to admire the sights and was approached by a local who recognized him. She was the co-owner of Document Records, a company that publishes meticulously documented collections of rare American music. She and her husband, the other co-owner, had been inspired by Sam and were great admirers. They invited Sam in to chat and the result was the UConn Archives receiving the huge full catalog of the Document label for inclusion in Sam and Ann’s collection.<\/p>\n

It was a tremendous honor to know Sam Charters. I’ve never met anyone else like him and certainly never will again. His contribution to music, especially American music, is enormous and invaluable. \u00a0And even though Sam is gone, his work and the music he loved, studied and recorded will be with us forever. One of the last things I wrote to Sam was that the Charters’ archive is in good, loving hands. I know someone who will see to that.<\/p>\n

– Nicholas Eshelman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The series A Language of Song\u00a0features the words of Samuel Charters and the recordings he produced as preserved in\u00a0The\u00a0Samuel and Ann Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture\u00a0at the University of Connecticut.\u00a0The series is a tribute to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5391"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5407,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391\/revisions\/5407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-dev.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}