9 Songs That Pointed Me to Louisiana
...whether or not I knew it at the time
I’m away from my desk right now. In the meantime here’s one of my favorite posts from about a year ago that many of you have not read. “And I was born one dark gray morn.’
With music coming in my ears, in my ears.”
(Paul Simon)
Note: In 2004, I moved from Michigan to Louisiana, a place I’d never been before.
I was thinking of all the music I’ve listened to in my life: music on the radio, on TV, or online, or in person, or music that I performed in person for an audience. All those experiences, feelings, and memories are like shiny, colorful marbles in a mason jar. They’re keepers, stashed away by me in a (so far) safe place: my heart.
If you love music as much as I do, you’ve probably done the same.
But when I look at that jar more closely, I feel like some of those marbles are entangled with others in an apparently random, yet noteworthy, way. Or maybe not random. Looking back on it, some of these marbles, these jewels, these amusing baubles, were arranged like atoms in a molecule that I can only now recognize. Confused? Keep reading for my list of 9 Songs That Pointed Me to Louisiana and see if what I’m getting at makes more sense.
Because what I really want to know is if something like this has ever happened to you.
I was barely six years old when I first heard this song on the radio. It’s a lively retelling of the 1814 battle between the Brits and the Americans. This song stands out for its historical context. But what really sells it is the upbeat tempo, making history come alive. Or not. All I can tell you is that I experienced it as a six-year-old child. I loved the rat-a-tat of the battle drummers, how the gator lost his mind, the chorus, but most of all, Johnny Horton’s voice, delivering a performance that was as riveting as it was brief. It left me wanting more.
And it was about New Orleans.
Sidebar: This song is a suitable example of what I call “a jellybean.” It is small, bright and shiny, sweet, and has no nutritional value whatsoever, yet it leaves you wanting more and more. I might expand on this in a later post.
Every junior high school buddy who played in a band played this number. Although its origins are debated, this evocative folk song, popularized by The Animals (below), paints a vivid picture of hard times in old New Orleans.
Also, around the same time The Animals were rising up the charts, radio DJs started playing what I later learned was a Mardi Gras classic, Iko Iko. It captures the energy and spirit of New Orleans’ street parades and celebrations.
(Are you starting to sense a pattern here?)
More specifically, it originates from the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans, who are Black carnival participants. They don Mardi Gras costumes inspired by Native American ceremonial attire. These groups are collectively termed “tribes.” Several dozen tribes exist, with membership varying from a handful to scores of members.
In 1965, the New Orleans-based girl group, The Dixie Cups, were in a New York studio recording for Leiber & Stoller’s Red Bird Records. After completing Chapel of Love, they spontaneously began singing Iko Iko during a break, a song taught to them by their mother. The song is a call-and-response chant from a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. As Barbara Hawkins, a group member, stated: “We were just playing around with it during a session using drumsticks on ashtrays. We didn’t realize Jerry and Mike had the tapes running.” Later, Leiber and Stoller added bass and percussion to the track, even incorporating the sound of drumsticks on ashtrays. Upon its release in 1965, it became the Dixie Cups’ last Top 40 hit.
Later in high school, I started listening to Detroit’s underground FM rock stations, specifically WABX-FM and WKNR-FM. I was listening to the latter station one weekend. “Uncle Russ” Gibb ignited an international furor when he passed along the startling “information” that Paul McCartney was dead. I’ll save that story later because it deserves the full treatment.
Around the same time in 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival blew up and ran off a string of #2 hits (answer to a trivia question), including possibly their best single: Born on the Bayou. I didn’t know what a bayou was, but it looked badass—loved the guitar hook. John Fogerty’s voice gave me the chills. I had no idea then that someday I’d go out on a bayou. But when I did, I remembered that guitar hook.
Flash forward to 1973. I’m twenty. Seger was based in Ann Arbor, where I was a student. But my family lived in Detroit. For my money, he captured the southeastern Michigan zeitgeist perfectly. For example, his description of Detroit’s then-mayor (and former sheriff) Roman Gribbs is spot on:
Sheriff Gribbs and his grim ad libs
Spoutin’ about the crime in the streets
And women were screamin’, and some was dreamin’
’ Bout the crimes between the sheets
He tailor-made the chorus for more current events:
Tricky Dick
He played it slick
Something I’s afraid he’d do
Back in ’72
The song has a dangerous edge to it, and it eventually snakes its way around to this verse:
Somehow, we made it to Baton Rouge
We stayed inside for a week
We weren’t in time for no Mardi Gras
So we decided to sleep
Who knew I’d live there someday?
I was fortunate enough to see Steve Goodman live in 1972-73, not long before he passed away. I saw him at the Ark in Ann Arbor, along with John Prine, David Bromberg, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and others (on separate occasions). He used to introduce this song by saying Arlo Guthrie paid his rent. I understand he’s attained god-status among Chicago Cubs fans, who claim him as their native son.
But for me, his song was like a persistent tapping on my shoulder. Back then, I had no idea how this would all turn out.
WABX-FM was the hip underground FM station we all listened to in Ann Arbor 1970-74. Inexplicably, one winter, they started sprinkling American Roots music into rotation with the Beatles, Stones, Cream, Jeff Beck, and John Mayall.
Goodbye, Joe, he gotta go, me oh my oh
He gotta go-pole the pirogue go down the Bayou
His Yvonne the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the Bayou
The tune was bouncy, catchy, optimistic, and a lot of fun. His voice was a sweet tenor, and he sang with a lot of emotion. Everyone knew what a bayou was (see Fogerty, John, above). But I had no idea what “poling the pirogue” meant. And I couldn’t get the tune out of my head.
Thibodaux, Fontaineaux, the place is buzzin’
A kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dressed in style, they go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the Bayou
Over the decades since then, I’ve often thought he might’ve written “Thibodaux and Boudreaux” but was talked out of it by someone who wasn’t in on (or had never heard of) the jokes about those two quintessential Louisiana boys.
Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo
For tonight, I’m a-gonna see my, my cher au mi-oh
Pick a guitar, fill fruit jar, and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the Bayou
I had no inkling I’d live here someday. Big favorites: Jambalaya and crawfish pie. Fillet gumbo for the silver. Love the Cajun French.
Formerly known as The Hawks (backing Ronnie Hawkins), The Band soon linked up with Dylan during what I believe is Dylan’s Golden Age. The song is dated 1969, but I’ve arranged it here, being mindful that I was there in early 1974 when Dylan and The Band played Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor. Together, they were crisp, tight, and faithful to the material (something Dylan couldn’t be bothered with later in his career). After the intermission, The Band played a pitch-perfect set, opening with Stage Fright (winking to the audience) before joining up with Dylan for the final set. Did I say early 1974? It was the height of the Watergate affair, and when Dylan sang the following lines, the audience rose as one with a roaring whoop:
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
But I digress.
Robbie Robertson wrote Cripple Creek and its plain-spoken poetry at its best. And Levon Helm’s lead vocal (and that shuffle-step drum fill) gives the song the sweetness of a happy memory. And it’s tied to the land. Which land?
When I get off of this mountain
You know where I wanna go?
Straight down the Mississippi River
To the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles, Louisiana
And, of course, like any good truck driver, he’s longing for a girl:
Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one
I’ve been to Lake Charles many times on business. Don’t know if there’s a Cripple Creek there.
Special Shout Out to Garth Hudson on the Hohner clavinet playing with a wah-wah pedal. I imagine a young Jerry Seinfeld nodding sagely.
Louisiana 1927 is a song written and performed by Randy Newman from his 1974 album Good Old Boys. The song is about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, one of U.S. history’s most destructive river floods. This event left a significant portion of rural Louisiana underwater, displacing many people, and it had profound social and political impacts. An excellent book, Rising Tide by John M. Barry, tells the long history of humans versus the Mississippi River. For example, it sure seems like every time the Army Corps of Engineers came up with a master plan to tame Old Man River, it failed.
I love that simple piano and lush string background that allows Newman’s voice to express all the exhaustion right up to the edge of resignation.
There’s even an amusing verse about the POTUS that is drenched in the irony that only Newman can put across in a song this sweet:
President Coolidge come down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand
President say, “Little Fat Man, ain’t it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker’s land”
Sidebar: That “little fat man?” In April 1927, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was designated to spearhead the rescue and relief operations. He orchestrated the rescue of 330,000 individuals from rooftops and elevated areas.
Anyway, my attachment to this song came not long after I moved to Louisiana, when the backwash from Hurricane Katrina ripped a tornado through our subdivision and put our 80-foot twin water oak tree onto our neighbor’s carport [another post]. I listened to this song differently after that.
In Conclusion
I really want to know is if something like this has ever happened to you: You may hear a song, and maybe another, and another…
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Have you ever felt like maybe it was the music?