Smithsonian to feature rubboard maker's work

SCOTT - "Tee" Don Landry has been making stainless steel rubboards for more than a decade. Now, the craftsman and musician is about to make history: One of his music-making boards will be exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History.

"I was notified this week by letter," said Landry.

Landry follows in the tradition of his father, Willie, who created the first "frottoir" for zydeco legend Cleveland Chenier in 1946.

Steve Velasquez, a curator for the institution's folk music collection, said the donation is a welcome addition to the archives.

"It will help to fill out our collection of folk life instruments," Velasquez said. "We don't have a lot in the zydeco category." The Smithsonian has not yet determined when the item will be exhibited.

Zydeco music, like jazz, is a form of music indigenous to America.

Although zydeco has incorporated instruments, such as the accordion, from other genres, the rubboard is central to zydeco.

Landry, who was born in 1957, didn't know his father had so strongly influenced zydeco music until after his death 20 years later. While working at neighboring oil field refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, Clifton Chenier and the elder Landry collaborated on the instrument's design. Clifton's brother, Cleveland, played a metal washboard, designed for cleaning clothes.

Clifton sought to modify the washboard into a musical instrument - a corrugated metal vest that would fit over the musician's shoulders. He asked Willie, a master welder, to create the board.

Willie made only one rubboard for the Cheniers, but its design has become an icon of zydeco music and of Southwest Louisiana. The original board probably no longer exists, said Landry.

"I've talked to a lot of people who claim to have Mr. Cleveland's rubboard, but I haven't been able to verify it," he said.

He added that it was made of tin, not stainless steel. "It was definitely played," he said. "So it probably did not survive this long."