Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Hackberry Ramblers were the top band in the 1930s

by Jim Bradshaw

Their leader was Luderin Darbone, who was born in 1913 in the Evangeline community in Acadia Parish. His father, Eddie Darbone, worked in the oil fields. His parents left Evangeline when Luderin was an infant, moving to Vinton and then to Texas.

His father bought Luderin a fiddle when he was about 10 years old. He learned to play it by taking a correspondence course paid for by his mother, and by listening to the hillbilly music that was played on the radio. His family moved to Hackberry when Luderin was in the 9th grade, and he met Edwin Duhon, who played accordion and guitar.

Darbone recalled in an interview with Ann Allen Savoy, "The accordion (Duhon) had wasn't much of an accordion and to buy a new accordion would have cost twenty dollars in those days and we didn't have that kind of money. And when we'd play at a party, we'd get paid by passing the hat. So we were lucky to make a dollar apiece. We had a radio and we'd start listening to this hillbilly music from Nashville and other parts of the country, and there was no accordion. So we started playing fiddle and guitar. There was another fellow in Hackberry (Alvin Ellender) who played the guitar and we got him in the group and we'd play house parties with fiddles and two guitars. So Edwin got away from his accordion."

He said in another interview, "We didn't know how the people would react to our first (house) dance -- we were there to play their dance with only a fiddle and two guitars but, to our amazement, we were a smashing success."

The Hackberry Ramblers began regular radio broadcasts in 1933, driving from Hackberry to radio station KFDM in the old Majestic Hotel in Lake Charles to make the early-morning broadcasts.

A month later, in April 1933, according to the recollection of Crawford Vincent, the band played its first club dance, in Blue Andrus' Dance Hall in Basile.

In 1935, the group moved to Crowley, which was more centrally located to the spots across south Louisiana and east Texas where they were being booked. About this time, Ellender left the group and was replaced by Floyd Rainwater, who sang and played the guitar. He was replaced a short time later by Lennis Sonnier.

"Darbone reminisced with Savoy, "Floyd Rainwater had to quit the night we played in Eunice. His wife had a laundry in Lake Charles and she needed him to help in the laundry. So that night we played in Eunice, she drove up there and got him and he had to quit. ... We had a dance to play the next night in Gueydan, so ... we knew that Lennis Sonnier wanted to join the band. ... We had to leave Eunice and drive to Vinton and get Lennis and go to Gueydan in the same day. And it was a Model A Ford and we could only drive about 35 or 40 miles an hour. It took us all day to do that, but we played the dance."

The Hackberry Ramblers also recorded during this period for the Bluebird label (a subsidiary of RCA). Their most successful record was a version of Jolie Blonde sung by Sonnier. They also recorded under the name "Riverside Ramblers."

Darbone explained that during his interview with Savoy. In 1936, the manager of the Montgomery Ward store in Lafayette hired the Ramblers to do three shows a week, live in the store and broadcast over radio station KVOL. About 1937, Montgomery Ward wanted to record the group under its own label. "So," Darbone explained, "we decided that any song recorded with English lyrics we'd call that band the Riverside Ramblers. Montgomery Ward ... had a contest to name the band. One of the suggestions was Riverside Ramblers because Montgomery Ward's most popular tire was called 'Riverside.' So we called our English record group the Riverside Ramblers and the Cajun records were by the Hackberry Ramblers."

The Hackberry Ramblers disbanded in 1939, when Luderin quit playing for a while because of the death of his father in an oilfield accident, but he formed a new group with the same name in the early 1940s. He was joined in this new group by Crawford Vincent and Jack Theriot. They played together until the World War II draft broke them up. During the war years, Darbone reorganized the band to include Eddie Shuler and Edwin Duhon.

In 1946, after Leo Soileau moved from the Silver Star Club in Lake Charles to begin a regular stand at the Showboat in Orange, Texas, the Hackberry Ramblers replaced him at the Silver Star. They played at the club every Saturday night for ten years, during that time paying homage to the club by recording a tune called Silver Star Stomp.

In 1963, when the band cut a record for the Arhoolie label, its members included Darbone on the violin; Duhon on accordion, rhythm guitar:, and vocals; Vincent on drurns and vocals; Sonnier on rhythm guitar and vocals; Johnny Parker on bass fiddle; and Glen Croker on steel guitar.

Pierre Daigle of Ville Platte, a former school teacher and part-time Cajun music disc jockey, says that the Hackberry Ramblers "were never a hardcore Cajun band." But, he says, "They were always, so far as I can tell a talented, happy, music-loving group who paid little attention to cliques and clans and fads. The membership was always a good mixture of Cajuns and non-Cajuns. The instruments they played were as diverse as the band members themselves. At times, they added the dobro, the saxophone, and the trumpet to their traditional instruments. Their motto seems to have been: play it well, make it exciting, make it entertaining, and let the good times roll."