Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, April 9, 1999

Requiem for a Pioneer

Remembering Cajun music maverick Aldus Roger

by Walter Pierce

Estimating the impact on Cajun music of the 83-year-old Roger, who died Easter Sunday after a brief illness, is a tricky undertaking. It's probably safe to say he revolutionized Cajun music. Longtime friend and admirer Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet of USL summed up Roger's contribution to Cajun music with a question: "Would rock 'n' roll be different if there weren't a Chuck Berry?"

His induction into both the Louisiana Hall of Fame and the Cajun French Music Hall of Fame gives some indication of his importance to the style.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Carencro-born Roger shocked his elders with his tight, masterful playing. He wasn't just a good accordionist, he was a great accordionist, and he and his band, The Lafayette Playboys, quickly established themselves as one of the most accomplished bands in Cajun music.

Roger was also quick to incorporate modern electric instruments into his repertoire, taking (yanking might be a better word) Cajun music from its acoustic origins into the electric age of radio and television. Piano, pedal steel, double and triple fiddles - virtually any instrument that could make Cajun music more melodic, more beautiful, was employed by Roger and his band. It wasn't willy-nilly though; it was purposeful, planned, done with an ear for the music.

For nearly a decade in the 1960s, Roger and his band performed every Saturday afternoon on KLFY TV-10, establishing for a generation of up-and-coming players the idea that Cajun music not only could but should be well-rehearsed and well-played.

"The level of musicianship in his band was remarkable," Ancelet said. "The live TV show was important because it was one of the first infiltrations of Cajun cultural traditions into a mass media that was sort of washing out Cajun culture. In this day, if Aldus Roger were young he'd find a way onto MTV."

The list of musicians who performed with Roger over the course of his career, Ancelet said, reads like a who's who in Cajun music. He surrounded himself by the best and got the best from his band.

"No matter what happened in the studio, his accordion playing was always the main event," said David Rachou, owner and engineer at La Louisianne Studio in Lafayette where Roger cut four records in the 1960s. Rachou's father, Carol, did the engineering for Roger's records.

"His accordion playing always stood out," Rachou recalled. "His rhythm was impeccable; that's what captured everyone. It proves that music is often raw talent, and that's what he had. He had no formal training in music or anything and he just played the music the way he felt it should be played."

Roger was a maverick.

"There have been throughout the years," Ancelet remarked, "people who upset the old-timers. In the late 20s Joe Falcon upset the old-timers and Nathan Abshire did it in the late 40s. Aldus Roger did that too. He was the next generation. Each generation had somebody who did that and Aldus Roger was the one in his generation who did it; who moved Cajun music forward."

Ancelet said Roger's impact on Cajun music is two-fold: "One is the incredibly beautiful music that he left," Ancelet noted. "The other part is the number of young musicians who were inspired to play and inspired to raise their level of musicianship."

Aldus Roger & The Lafayette Playboys were scheduled to perform at the Liberty Theatre in Eunice on April 24. Ancelet said the band is considering performing the gig with some of the accordion players whom Roger mentored -- a sort of tribute to Aldus Roger. "The only problem with that idea," Ancelet commented, "is if it gets out, there's going to be hundreds of people that will want to perform."