Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Researcher recalls Cajun Wedding day

by Jim Bradshaw

A good bit of the early Louisiana French music that has been preserved was recorded by John Lomax and particularly by his son, Alan, who traveled throughout south Louisiana as early as the late 1920s, urging people to sing their old songs into his recorder. Together, they collected more than 10,000 recordings of American folk songs, including Cajun music.

In her 1935 masters thesis, "Louisiana French Folk Songs," Irene Thérèse Whitfield, another researcher of the era, told about a day she spent with Lomax "song-hunting" in the Marais Bouleur area of Acadia Parish, and about their good fortune in coming upon a wedding dance.

On one occasion I was out "songhunting" with Mr. Alan Lomax. He had in his automobile the machinery for making phonograph records for the Library of Congress, while I was armed with paper for writing songs. We first went to Crowley, where we secured for the day the services of a man who was supposed to know everyone in the Marais Bouleur district, northeast of Crowley, a place reputed to have good Cajun singers.

This young man proved quite a relief from the staid, conventional people with whom Mr. Lomax and I are usually associated. He was a handsome Creole type with a true Creole name, but first claimed to be of Irish descent, and later said he was Spanish. He said he had been shot at on several occasions, had served three sentences in jail, and had been cut twice with a razor by a woman in an attempt at murder. Scars which he showed attested to the razor slashes, but the man did not need any proofs, as his own naiveté and sincerity, and his constant references to "God's truth," and "God A'mighty" should have been adequate proofs of his statement.

He entertained us while talking of his marital relations. He was divorced from his first wife, having lot her go when she became "more interested of (sic) someone else" than she was of' him. Now in his early twenties he was married to a second wife but hoped to get enough money "roughnecking" in the Bosco Oil Fields the following week to leave her and go somewhere else to live. He seemed to know everything about making money, saying he bet he had made more money in a week in the past years than Mr. Lomax had in the full year, notwithstanding all the heavy machinery he had in his car. "But, of course, you must get into a business that pays money," he kept repeating. By questing, we did find the best paying of all business, but as Prohibition no longer exists, even this gateway to wealth is closed to us.

When we arrived in the Marais Bouleur district, our guide took us through a series of sharp turns in dirt roads and crop headlands to a house in which lived the best of the Cajun accordion players of the neighborhood. At every bump in the road Mr. Lomax feared for his recording machinery. We found the most famous of all the accordion players seated in his humble abode in the center of a room surrounded by admiring listeners. He had just been asked to play for a wedding in that vicinity, was cleanly shaven, well powdered, and was practicing his repertoire of songs for the occasion. He was enough of an artiste to enjoy his playing, and prefaced songs with some such remark as, "I just 'made' this song last week; I liked this one better that one; my grandfather played this one; this is a beautiful waltz,' or some similar comment.

The father of the bride arrived in his new car to take the player to the wedding. When he heard that Mr. Lomax made records, he cordially invited us to go to the wedding and record the songs there. We accepted the invitation; but since we had a few other people to hunt that day, we said that we would go later in the afternoon. Then the problem of finding the house arose. Mr. Lomax and I would have been willing to rely on remembering the name, but the father wanted us to have it in writing, though he could not sign his name. Fortunately, then, some man drove up who could write, and who knew the father. He asked for pencil and paper, went to the hood of the car, and started the slow process of forming eleven letters. The car had been standing in the sun while we had been in the house and had become so hot that the heat over the hood was uncomfortable. Consequently, the man chose as a table for writing the hood of a car that was in the shade and returned triumphantly some minutes later with the paper bearing the name written faultlessly and apparently with much care.

Before long Mr Lomax, the guide, and I were hunting for "a white house, back of three chinaberry trees, at the first turn after the little store." By the combination of asking for the home of the man whose name we had in written form, and by following the directions given us for finding the house, we arrived in ample time for the wedding.

According to plans, the little bride dressed in a tenant's house near her father's home. She intended to come at four o'clock to take her seat near the groom in the chairs set aside for them and draped in white cotton; but at twenty minutes after three, she came streaking across the pasture, holding her train up out of the cockle burrs and grass, and picking her steps in the spots that were not too thickly piled with dust. Some one in jest had advanced the clock at the tenant's house. The young bride was not in the least disconcerted by being forty minutes early; she sat quietly in her chair, cast a sweet, gay smile on her assembled girl friends as she glanced around the room occasionally, and chewed gum constantly. I heard her described as a blonde who would fade young; but on this, her wedding day, she was superb. Her complexion was fresh and fair; her eyes, bright; and her lips picturesquely arched with just the correct shade of lipstick to match the pink paper flowers of her bridal bouquet. As to her costume, one might say that it left nothing to be desired in a combination of white crepe, satin, and tulle.

Except for the chairs and benches and a dresser with a heavy marble top, the furniture had been removed from the room, leaving the center vacant. The reason for this was soon apparent. At four o'clock the musicians and gentlemen strode into the room and the wedding march began. A violinist and our friend, the accordion player, led, followed by a player of the triangle, then the bride and groom, and then the other young people of the community in couples. The groom was unmistakable; he was dressed in a dark suit, wore black gloves and a worried look, and beads of perspiration had formed on his temple and forehead. He was perfectly groomed, and with his little bride made a picture justly admired by the assembled friends.

Around and around the march continued for several minutes. The musicians seemed to have an endless supply of tunes while they walked around with measured steps. When finally they did stop, some lady advanced to the bride suggesting that she and the groom not dance because of the heat. She led them off the floor to their chairs from where they viewed the dancers. The musicians sat on a bench reserved for them in one comer of the room. They played with all of their strength, shrieked occasionally, passed among themselves their much-loved bottle, and parked it on the floor beside them between swigs. As the dance progressed, they became gayer and gayer; the shrieks more and more numerous and high-pitched; but the dancers less and less enthusiastic because of the great heat.

When the number of dancing couples had dwindled considerably, the bride's father went to her, led her to his car, tried placing her and her bouquet first in the front seat of the car, and not finding enough space, transferred her and her flowers to the rear seat. A bridesmaid climbed in beside her. Meanwhile the guests were preparing to follow the car and the musicians had lined up on a bench in the yard and were playing for the departure while Mr. Lomax was recording. At first there was only the instrumentation interspersed with yells, but as the bride's car traveled forth bearing its little burden so willing to try another life, the accordion player broke spontaneously into song -- something like:

Tite fille, to quittes ton papa et ta maman pour aller dans la misère.
Bye-bye tite fille, ton papa et to maman ...
(Little girl, you are leaving your papa and your mama to go into wretchedness. Bye-bye little girl, your papa and your mama ...)

I rushed over to the singer thinking that as soon as he stopped playing I should ask him for his words. I had understood them but had not been able to write them all at the time he said them. Try as I might, I could not make him even believe he had sung. He looked at me blankly. The triangle player came to my rescue, telling him that I wanted that words of his song. He answered very willingly but hopeless, "Question me Monday, I'm too darn drunk today." When we left him, Mr. Lomax remarked that it would be a long day before we saw him again. The day is not over. I have tried since to distinguish the words on the record. They are indistinct as the music is heavy and the articulation poor.

We did not wait until the married couple returned, but while Mr. Lomax recorded more orchestra music, I went to the back of the house and became acquainted with the ladies who had remained and played with the babies lying on pillows on the dining-room floor. The people were friendly and hospitable. One lady offered me cake and even after my refusal handed me a plate with slices of several kinds. I ate some and enjoyed it. The house was immaculately clean, and the rags soaked with coal oil wrapped around the legs of the kitchen safe kept ants off the food. From the conversation I learned that the real wedding dance was to take place that night in a rented hall at which time a free will offering was to be taken and given to the groom to begin housekeeping. Some man came into the dining room asking, where his wife was complaining that she had left him only twenty-five cents for the dance.

When Mr. Lomax had finished recording what he wanted, we thanked our friends and left. We passed through Crowley to take our guide home. He had certainly been worth our while. He had guided us, entertained us, made announcements on records, coaxed singers, and pacified drunkards. Memory of him might have been perfect had he not, as we put him down in Crowley, bolted into a saloon from which he emerged later quite intoxicated. It was then that he addressed me for the first time and to the best of his memory was "Mrs. Bergeron".