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different jazz bands that he was affiliated with and most of them were him and his family, just

cousins, the Pouches. They were horn players, piano players, just all kind of musicians right here
in this area and this is music that they were playing. Then right around the 40s and 50s, when
Clifton Chenier came round with the idea of zydeco, he linked up with my grandfather because he
was in the area with all these jazz musicians and started playing with grandfather in building a
band because before Clifton’s time for zydeco, there was no zydeco, it was la la music and there

was small accordion with fiddles and triangles and stuff like that. When Clifton came up with the
idea to play piano, to play the big band sound and still play the French music, he decided to put a
band together and he was right there in the middle of all these musicians and he linked up with my
grandfather and my grandfather was his first drummer.

BiTS: Right, there’s some very deep roots there. Let’s head in a different direction with roots. Do
you have any real connection with the Arcadians from up north, from Canada?

CL: I haven’t found any connections yet. We’re still searching for that, but I haven’t found any
connections yet. Not saying that it’s not there, we’re just still searching for that.

BiTS: Okay. Let me ask you a couple

more questions about the music. When
you say you’re improvising, there must be
some kind of framework that bands
operate in. It’s mostly, I think two-steps
and that kind of thing. How does the
framework operate? Do you just start a
melody and people play along, or what?

CL: For zydeco or jazz or just in general?

BiTS: For zydeco, yeah.

CL: Yeah, pretty much, zydeco is based
on feeling. Of course, there’s still some knowledge that is required musically, but a lot of it is
feeling and improv. You might hear an accordion pattern and you just kick off with it and then as a
drummer, I can hear what kind of beat should fit it and we’ll try it and then the bass will kick in.
You’ll hear a bass pattern and it just kinda forms like that. A lot of people nowadays they try to
write different patterns, which is fine as well, but traditionally how Clifton did it and how a lot of
people back in the day did it, I mean it was just really based on feel and of course, everybody has a

completely different feel in their head which is why everybody had a different sound. Clifton had
his sound, Rockin’ Dopsie had his, John Delafose has his, Boozoo Chavis had his, and so on and so
forth. It was just whatever you feel.

BiTS: Is there a difference between Cajun music and zydeco music when it’s played by white

people than by black people?

CL: I would say that typically when you hear zydeco being played by blacks, you could tell. Like I
say, there’s a feeling there that there’s a soul to it. There’s an attitude to it almost that you can