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CL: Well, being brought up in Houston, my dad would take me to all the dances and a lot of the
bands at the time would let me sit in on a song or two, and as I got older, I got a little bit stronger, I
got better. Around the age of 12, an older zydeco gentleman by the name of Wilbert Thibodeaux and
the Zydeco Rascals was his band name, he saw me sitting in with another guy. His name was L.
C. Donatto, in Houston on drums, and he hired me right there on the spot to play in his band.

BiTS: You were playing drums then, not accordion?

CL: Correct, yeah.

BiTS: At what stage did you start playing accordion then?

CL: It wasn’t long after because while I was playing drums with Mr. Wilber Thibodeaux, I would
watch his hands on the accordion while I’m playing, and I was intrigued by that. I probably started
playing or trying to attempt to play the accordion
maybe the next year, actually.

BiTS: Is it hard work to learn to play that instrument?

CL: The accordion, actually the first accordion that I
had was a piano accordion like Clifton Chenier. It took
a little practice, but I didn’t like it at first because I
wasn’t used to it and I didn’t really understand it, so I
put it down and then my dad got me the smaller

melodeon style accordion and then I started picking
that up a little bit quicker. From that I moved to the
3-row accordion, like the Tex-Mex kind of accordion,
Conjunto style stuff. So I moved to that accordion and
then I came back to piano and piano has been my

favourite accordion ever since.

BiTS: When you’re learning to play, do accordion
players do the same as guitar players do and that’s
what’s called woodshedding, playing along with other
people’s music?

CL: Yeah, I think that’s pretty common because I mean you have to start somewhere and for me
and I could probably say that for today’s time, there’s no schools or anything like that in how to
learn how to play this kind of music. You kind of just have to listen and look and then maybe you
can probably find somebody to give you lessons here and there, but for the most part, it’s just
watching and just constant watching, constant listening and that’s what I did. Anytime somebody

was playing in the area, we were there, and I was right in the front. I wasn’t even worried about
the dancing going on. I couldn’t care less about that; I just wanted to watch the band [chuckles].
Which is probably why I don’t know how to dance today because I wasn’t paying attention.