Page 42 - BiTS_09_SEPTEMBER_2021

Willie Durriseau—Creole House Dance—Nouveau Electric

Records

Willie Durisseau was born on February 20, 1918 in Mallet, and
was raised in Lebeau, both communities in St. Landry Parish,
Louisiana. His days as a Creole fiddler began in Lebeau, where he
and his brother, Jimmie, made their first fiddles out of cigar
boxes. They played house dances (Les bals de maison) in the

1930s and were usually joined by one or more of their cousins,
the Joe brothers: Aaron, Caffery, and Clarence.

Louis Michott, a Grammy award winning Cajun musician and
vocalist, met with the Durisseaus (Willie and his wife Irma) for a
series of informal interviews in April and May of 2019, along with Corey Ledet, a Creole Zydeco
accordion player, Robin Miller, a local French speaker and cultural enthusiast, and J.B. Adams, a

Creole music aficionado and radio DJ in Houston, who was the first to find out that Willie had
retaken to the fiddle at the age of 100 years old.

Willie and Irma chatted about their memories of providing music for house dances in the 1930s. As
they did so, Willie picked up his fiddle and played some snatches of tunes he recalled, revealing a
style of music that is unique to that period and providing an insight to the Creole, accordionless
music of the last century. Willie was physically unable to play for long so this two track CD features

a short collection of snatches of music labelled either ‘blues’ or ‘zydeco’, three melodies in each
segment. This stuff is a wonderful historical reminder of days past and leaves a bit of remorse at
what has been lost. Check it out. It’s delightful.

Willie passed-on on December 17, 2019.

Ian K. McKenzie

Starlite Campbell Band—The Language of Curiosity—
Supertone Records

Oh My, Oh My! What a cracker this one is. The last album from

SCB, ‘Blueberry Pie’ was given five stars by Rock 'n’ Reel
Magazine as “…a stunning debut”. Well we don’t give stars
(perhaps we should?) but IMHO this one is better—by far.

Recorded at Supertone Records studio in Valencia, Spain; Thören,

Germany; Samora Correia, Portugal and Rockfield Studios, Wales
and produced and engineered by Suzy Starlite and Simon
Campbell with considerable care and skill. There is an
immaculate use of valve (tube) amps and old style tape machines and the album runs to ten
stunningly good tracks.

I listened to the whole album at one go and I while I was listening I kept on being reminded of
something—a sound, an ambience—that I could not quite identify. Then it hit me. This is what
Cream sounded like before they became super-stars, and before they filled stadiums and produced
20 minute solos on all three of their instruments. There was then, an interplay between (in
particular) bass (Jack Bruce) and guitar (Eric Clapton) which brought the bass out of the back-line

and allowed it to be melodic as well as rhythmic. Here, Suzy Starlite (bass) and Simon Campbell