Iry LeJeune
Encyclopedia
Iry LeJeune was one of the best selling and most popular Cajun
musicians in the mid to late 1940s into the early 1950s.
His recordings and repertoire remain influential to the present day. He was among a handful of recording artists who returned the accordion
to prominence in commercially recorded Cajun music and dance hall
performances. The return of the accordion contrasted with the popular Cajun recorded output of the late 1930s and 1940s, a time during which fiddle
s and Western Swing
sounds from Texas
were influencing Cajun music. The return of the accordion to prominence is referred to as a Cajun music renaissance, i.e. a return to the roots and rebirth in Cajun pride in their traditional music. Iry LeJeune is regarded as one of the best and most beloved Cajun accordionists and singers of all time.
farm at Pointe Noire, a rural area near Church Point, LA. LeJeune came from a family that embraced music and his father, Agness LeJeune, taught him the rudiments of accordion at an early age. LeJeune's cousin, Angelas LeJeune, an excellent accordion player who'd made 78s
in the 1920s, also encouraged him, often showing LeJeune traditional songs on his instrument. Nearly blind
, music provided happiness for LeJeune, and as he grew older, he relied on it to make a living. Besides his cousin, LeJeune's major influence was Amédé Ardoin
, the Creole accordion player who made several records in the 1930s - "Jole Catin" and "Les Blues De Voyage" among others - and was popular at white and Creole dances in the area. LeJeune cherrypicked Ardoin's repertoire and adopted the emotive crying style of vocals that would eventually become his trademark.
Unable to work in the fields because of his poor eyesight, as a youth, LeJeune entertained the local sharecroppers. By the time he reached his teens, LeJeune was making a few dollars on weekends playing dances around Church Point, and occasionally traveling as far as Eunice, LA to perform. At the conclusion of World War II, LeJeune moved west to Lacassine, Louisiana
(near Lake Charles, LA) where there were many more venues in which to play music.
should assimilate with the rest of America and eliminate the French language
, culture and music.
Luckily, in 1948 LeJeune met fiddler Floyd LeBlanc. Together they traveled to Houston, Texas
where they recorded "Love Bridge Waltz" and "Evangeline Special" on the Opera
label with Virgil Bozeman's Oklahoma Tornadoes supporting. The disc was the turning point in LeJeune's career and for Cajun music. For the first time in nearly a decade, the accordion again wailed from radios and jukeboxes, largely due to many Cajuns returning home from World War II
eager to hear their own Cajun music. Cajun listeners responded by buying great quantities of the release. LeJeune stayed in Houston with LeBlanc, performing and enjoying the popularity of the record, but returned to Louisiana after six months.
Upon returning to Lacassine, LeJeune went to radio station KPLC
in Lake Charles and asked to perform on the air. The station manager wasn't keen on hearing the primitive, wailing accordion, but disc jockey Eddie Shuler liked what he heard and featured him on several broadcasts. "I felt sorry for the kid," admitted Shuler. "He was nearly blind and he had no other way to make money."
The cameo on Shuler's show proved so successful that Lake Charles listeners demanded more French music. A year later, there was as much as eight hours of French broadcasting on KPLC daily. Still, LeJeune needed a new record out to get work at the dances around Lake Charles. He then approached Shuler, who'd already made a record with his group, the Reveliers, and released it on his own Goldband label. "He said 'Eddie, I want to make records and I want you to make them,'" said Shuler. "I didn't know anything about making French records. Finally I agreed though because there was nobody around here making French records. Nobody was interested in making them because there was no money in French records. But as it turned out, I had the market to myself."
Bribing the engineer with a bottle of Old Crow
, Shuler had LeJeune record "Lacassine Special" and "Calcasieu Waltz" on a disc cutter at the radio station used to record commercials and jingle
s. He sent the metal masters to Houston where several hundred 78s were pressed on the Folk Star label. Selling the release from the trunk of his car to record shops and jukebox
outlets, the disc did remarkably well in the area. As a result, Shuler rushed LeJeune back to the station to cut "Teche Special" and "Tee Mone." Suddenly, the fiddle was on the way out of Louisiana and the accordion was back in. Accordionists Lawrence Walker
, Aldus Roger
, Sidney Brown and Nathan Abshire
would soon follow with their own records, but they couldn't touch LeJeune in terms of popularity or sales.
LeJeune assembled a crack band, the Lacassine Playboys, which at one time or another featured Crawford Vincent or Robby Bertrand on drums, Alfred "Duckhead" Cormier on guitar, Wilson Granger on fiddle, R. C. Vanicor on steel guitar and even occasionally Shuler on guitar. The Playboys were known for their casual appearance on the bandstand as LeJeune, never further than an arm's length from a cigarette
and a cold bottle of Jax, often looked like he'd just arrived from a day of fishing. Attire aside, LeJeune continued to accumulate a phenomenal body of work. Shuler continued to record LeJeune at KPLC and later at the studio he built on Railway Avenue in Lake Charles. He even recorded LeJeune at his Calcasieu, LA house, setting his tape recorder on the kitchen table. From LeJeune's kitchen came the beautiful "Duralde Waltz," a song that featured no accordion, but did include a well-timed bark by LeJeune's fox terrier
. Another classic was "I Made A Big Mistake," a J.D. Miller composition accentuated by LeJeune's bluesy vocals and crying accordion.
were returning home after playing at a dance at the Green Wing club in Eunice on October 8, 1955 when tragedy struck. "They were coming home on old Highway 90," recalled Shuler. "They had a flat where they were widening the highway and they couldn't pull off. They were trying to change the tire when a guy came along going about 90 MPH. He hit him (LeJeune) and knocked him into a field. That was the end of Iry."
LeJeune left a wife Wilma, and five children including Eddie LeJeune and Ervin LeJeune, who would follow in their father's musical footsteps.
LeJeune's complete body of work consists of less than 30 songs. Frustratingly for Cajun listeners, unless you were lucky enough to possess some of his original 78s or 45s, until a few years ago, you couldn't hear LeJeune's undoctored masterpieces. When assembling LeJeune's material for reissue on LP in 1970, Shuler overdubbed an electric bass on all the tracks. This was undone when Ace Records in England
assembled Iry LeJeune: Cajun's Greatest - The Definitive Collection using original discs and master tapes as sources.
Cajun
Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...
musicians in the mid to late 1940s into the early 1950s.
His recordings and repertoire remain influential to the present day. He was among a handful of recording artists who returned the accordion
Cajun accordion
A Cajun accordion also known as a squeezebox is single-row diatonic button accordion used for playing Cajun music.-History:Many different accordions were developed in Europe throughout the 19th century, and exported worldwide...
to prominence in commercially recorded Cajun music and dance hall
Dance hall
Dance hall in its general meaning is a hall for dancing. From the earliest years of the twentieth century until the early 1960s, the dance hall was the popular forerunner of the discothèque or nightclub...
performances. The return of the accordion contrasted with the popular Cajun recorded output of the late 1930s and 1940s, a time during which fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
s and Western Swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
sounds from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
were influencing Cajun music. The return of the accordion to prominence is referred to as a Cajun music renaissance, i.e. a return to the roots and rebirth in Cajun pride in their traditional music. Iry LeJeune is regarded as one of the best and most beloved Cajun accordionists and singers of all time.
Early life
Iry LeJeune was born October 28, 1928, on a modest sharecroppingSharecropping
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land . This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of...
farm at Pointe Noire, a rural area near Church Point, LA. LeJeune came from a family that embraced music and his father, Agness LeJeune, taught him the rudiments of accordion at an early age. LeJeune's cousin, Angelas LeJeune, an excellent accordion player who'd made 78s
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
in the 1920s, also encouraged him, often showing LeJeune traditional songs on his instrument. Nearly blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
, music provided happiness for LeJeune, and as he grew older, he relied on it to make a living. Besides his cousin, LeJeune's major influence was Amédé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin was an American Louisiana Creole musician, known for his high singing voice and virtuosity on the Creole/Cajun Accordion...
, the Creole accordion player who made several records in the 1930s - "Jole Catin" and "Les Blues De Voyage" among others - and was popular at white and Creole dances in the area. LeJeune cherrypicked Ardoin's repertoire and adopted the emotive crying style of vocals that would eventually become his trademark.
Unable to work in the fields because of his poor eyesight, as a youth, LeJeune entertained the local sharecroppers. By the time he reached his teens, LeJeune was making a few dollars on weekends playing dances around Church Point, and occasionally traveling as far as Eunice, LA to perform. At the conclusion of World War II, LeJeune moved west to Lacassine, Louisiana
Lacassine, Louisiana
Lacassine is a city in Jefferson Davis Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The Little Kahuna Water Park is currently being constructed right off of Interstate 10 in Lacassine...
(near Lake Charles, LA) where there were many more venues in which to play music.
Cajun Renaissance
Initially, LeJeune found the going tough because at the time the accordion and Cajun music had become unpopular, as it was being replaced by the fiddle and Western Swing music. In postwar Louisiana, many felt AcadianaAcadiana
Acadiana, or The Heart of Acadiana, is the official name given to the French Louisiana region that is home to a large Francophone population. Of the 64 parishes that make up Louisiana, 22 named parishes and other parishes of similar cultural environment, make up the intrastate...
should assimilate with the rest of America and eliminate the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, culture and music.
Luckily, in 1948 LeJeune met fiddler Floyd LeBlanc. Together they traveled to Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
where they recorded "Love Bridge Waltz" and "Evangeline Special" on the Opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
label with Virgil Bozeman's Oklahoma Tornadoes supporting. The disc was the turning point in LeJeune's career and for Cajun music. For the first time in nearly a decade, the accordion again wailed from radios and jukeboxes, largely due to many Cajuns returning home from World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
eager to hear their own Cajun music. Cajun listeners responded by buying great quantities of the release. LeJeune stayed in Houston with LeBlanc, performing and enjoying the popularity of the record, but returned to Louisiana after six months.
Upon returning to Lacassine, LeJeune went to radio station KPLC
KPLC
KPLC, channel 7, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Lake Charles, Louisiana broadcasting on digital channel 7. It is owned by Raycom Media, and has transmitter facilities located in Fenton, Louisiana....
in Lake Charles and asked to perform on the air. The station manager wasn't keen on hearing the primitive, wailing accordion, but disc jockey Eddie Shuler liked what he heard and featured him on several broadcasts. "I felt sorry for the kid," admitted Shuler. "He was nearly blind and he had no other way to make money."
The cameo on Shuler's show proved so successful that Lake Charles listeners demanded more French music. A year later, there was as much as eight hours of French broadcasting on KPLC daily. Still, LeJeune needed a new record out to get work at the dances around Lake Charles. He then approached Shuler, who'd already made a record with his group, the Reveliers, and released it on his own Goldband label. "He said 'Eddie, I want to make records and I want you to make them,'" said Shuler. "I didn't know anything about making French records. Finally I agreed though because there was nobody around here making French records. Nobody was interested in making them because there was no money in French records. But as it turned out, I had the market to myself."
Bribing the engineer with a bottle of Old Crow
Old Crow
Old Crow is a low-priced brand of Kentucky-made straight bourbon whiskey, along with the slightly higher quality, but still inexpensive Old Crow Reserve brand. It is distilled by Beam Inc., which also produces Jim Beam and several other brands of bourbon whiskey...
, Shuler had LeJeune record "Lacassine Special" and "Calcasieu Waltz" on a disc cutter at the radio station used to record commercials and jingle
Jingle
A jingle is a short tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and lyrics that explicitly promote the product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television...
s. He sent the metal masters to Houston where several hundred 78s were pressed on the Folk Star label. Selling the release from the trunk of his car to record shops and jukebox
Jukebox
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media...
outlets, the disc did remarkably well in the area. As a result, Shuler rushed LeJeune back to the station to cut "Teche Special" and "Tee Mone." Suddenly, the fiddle was on the way out of Louisiana and the accordion was back in. Accordionists Lawrence Walker
Lawrence Walker
Lawrence Walker was a Cajun accordionist born near Duson, Louisiana. He is known for his original songs, including Reno Waltz, Evangeline Special, Bosco Stomp, and Mamou Two Step.-Biography:...
, Aldus Roger
Aldus Roger
Aldus Roger was a Cajun accordion player in southwest Louisiana, best known for his accordion skills, and television music program.-Early life:...
, Sidney Brown and Nathan Abshire
Nathan Abshire
Nathan Abshire was an American Cajun accordion player who, along with Iry LeJeune, was responsible for the renaissance of the accordion in Cajun music in the 1940s....
would soon follow with their own records, but they couldn't touch LeJeune in terms of popularity or sales.
LeJeune assembled a crack band, the Lacassine Playboys, which at one time or another featured Crawford Vincent or Robby Bertrand on drums, Alfred "Duckhead" Cormier on guitar, Wilson Granger on fiddle, R. C. Vanicor on steel guitar and even occasionally Shuler on guitar. The Playboys were known for their casual appearance on the bandstand as LeJeune, never further than an arm's length from a cigarette
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
and a cold bottle of Jax, often looked like he'd just arrived from a day of fishing. Attire aside, LeJeune continued to accumulate a phenomenal body of work. Shuler continued to record LeJeune at KPLC and later at the studio he built on Railway Avenue in Lake Charles. He even recorded LeJeune at his Calcasieu, LA house, setting his tape recorder on the kitchen table. From LeJeune's kitchen came the beautiful "Duralde Waltz," a song that featured no accordion, but did include a well-timed bark by LeJeune's fox terrier
Fox Terrier
Fox Terrier refers primarily to two different breeds of the terrier dog type: the Smooth Fox Terrier and the Wire Fox Terrier. Both of these breeds originated in the 19th century from a handful of dogs who are descended from earlier varieties of British terriers, and are related to other modern...
. Another classic was "I Made A Big Mistake," a J.D. Miller composition accentuated by LeJeune's bluesy vocals and crying accordion.
Death
Sadly, at the peak of his career, LeJeune was killed at the age of 26. LeJeune and fiddler J. B. FuselierJ. B. Fuselier
Jean Batiste "J.B." Fuselier was a Cajun musician most remembered for his tune "Ma Chere Bassette." He played for many years with the group J. B. and His Merrymakers.-Early life:...
were returning home after playing at a dance at the Green Wing club in Eunice on October 8, 1955 when tragedy struck. "They were coming home on old Highway 90," recalled Shuler. "They had a flat where they were widening the highway and they couldn't pull off. They were trying to change the tire when a guy came along going about 90 MPH. He hit him (LeJeune) and knocked him into a field. That was the end of Iry."
LeJeune left a wife Wilma, and five children including Eddie LeJeune and Ervin LeJeune, who would follow in their father's musical footsteps.
Legacy
Widely mourned in Acadiana, LeJeune's music continued to live on. To this day most jukeboxes in Acadiana have at least one selection by LeJeune, he remains a staple of Cajun radio, and most Cajun bands feature some of LeJeune's material. The timelessness of LeJeune's music can be traced to his mastery of the accordion and his unrestrained individuality. LeJeune sang deeply personal songs about his life which in fact reflected the lives of all Cajuns. Iry LeJeune said that he wasn't ashamed to sing and speak French and that the Cajun way of life suited him just fine. Simply put, he was proud to be Cajun when it wasn't necessarily popular.LeJeune's complete body of work consists of less than 30 songs. Frustratingly for Cajun listeners, unless you were lucky enough to possess some of his original 78s or 45s, until a few years ago, you couldn't hear LeJeune's undoctored masterpieces. When assembling LeJeune's material for reissue on LP in 1970, Shuler overdubbed an electric bass on all the tracks. This was undone when Ace Records in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
assembled Iry LeJeune: Cajun's Greatest - The Definitive Collection using original discs and master tapes as sources.
- Iry LeJeune with the Oklahoma Tornadoes: Love Bridge Waltz Listen
- Iry LeJeune with the Oklahoma Tornadoes: Evangeline Special Listen