Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Iry Lejeune pivotal figure in salvation of Cajun music

by Jim Bradshaw

By the late 1940s, almost all commercially recorded "Cajun" music was little more than Texas swing music sung in French. But in 1948, Iry Lejeune recorded La Valse du Pont d 'Amour and the pendulum began to swing back again.

A singer, composer, and accordionist, Lejeune was born in Pointe Noire of Acadia Parish on Oct. 28,1928. Lejeune was almost blind from birth, which kept him from doing well in school, but his ear for music and his love of the accordion pointed the way to a career. He began to play for local dances around the Lacassine area in the 1940s.

Greatly influenced by the recordings of Amédé Ardoin and by his own relatives and neighbors, Lejeune went against the grain to perform the old, traditional style that was quickly disappearing.

One of those influences was Angelas Lejeune, his uncle, who at one time was among the best known accordion players in south Louisiana. Angelas began playing music when he was about 12 years old. His father, Guston Lejeune, played the fiddle, and his brother, Théobert, was also a good accordion player

In an interview with Pierre Daigle, Angelas recalled that "a big accordion playing contest held in Opelousas in about 1936 gave him his big break. Thirty-three accordion players had assembled there to play in the contest, which was arranged by no other than Charles Thibodeaux, then sheriff of St Landry parish, and a druggist by the name of Boudreaux, the first name he's forgotten." He won the contest and was offered two recording sessions with Brunswick, the recording affiliate of Warner Brothers. "That year" Daigle reports, "a group of Acadiana performers went to New Orleans to cut records. Amédé Ardoin and Angelas were among them. They became friends for life."

Angelas recalled in that interview with Daigle that "Iry as a young boy of 15 would come to his house almost every day to practice on his accordion. Iry's father, Agness Lejeune ... was a tenant farmer. ... There was no money to buy try an accordion, so almost each day Iry would come."

According to Daigle's report, "Angelas recalls that he would hand over the accordion to try and say, 'Go to it.' Iry would play all morning while Mr. Lejeune worked in his fields. ( Iry could not work in the fields because of his poor eyesight.) At noon, Mr. Angelas and his family would go back to fields leaving Iry behind at the house to practice on the accordion."

Iry's first accordion was reputedly a gift from another of his uncles, Stephen Lejeune, who also gained some local fame playing at spots such as Club La Lune and the China Ball Dance Hall at Bosco.

Ann Allen Savoy talked to accordion player Linus Bertrand, who "remembers that every Saturday morning (Iry) would walk the half-mile from his house out to the gravel road with his accordion in a sack. From there, he would catch any ride he could, no matter where it was going, and go play his accordion for whomever would listen. Often he would sit in with Alphée Bergeron and the Veteran Playboys during their dances at the popular Dixie Club in Eunice."

According to Barry Jean Ancelet, "Some said the young singer (Iry) ... who carried his accordion in a flour sack didn't know better, but crowds rushed to hear his highly emotional music. His unexpected popular success focused attention on cultural values that Cajuns and Creoles had begun to fear losing."

According to Daigle, "In my opinion, the highest point of Cajun music was reached in (Iry's) music, ... (Aldus) Roger plays a cool music, a music so perfect that it carries your feet along if you care to dance to it. But it does not bite and bum and blister the heart as does Iry's music. In Iry's music is alt the cruel loneliness of our Cajun history. Not only the loneliness at the time of our exile, but the later years of poverty the poor little tenant shacks in cotton fields and along forests, with their mud chimneys, or the big sad old houses with a stairway to the attic and their mournful shutters in the gables. ... It's all there in Iry's music,"

Lejeune was 35 years old when he died on Oct. 8, 1955, at the peak of his career after being hit by a car on Hwy. 190 near Eunice. But because of Iry, musicians such as Lawrence Walker, Austin Pitre, and Nathan Abshire followed his lead and began to play traditional Cajun music once again.