Ambrose Thibodeaux-More Authentic Acadian French Music

Ok.  I messed up the math on this.  I thought it was $5 with discount but in reality it turns out it was $5.60.  My bad.  Probably should re-adjust the threshold for inflation.

Acadian music is the basis of Cajun music which has been blended with creole to form zydeco.  This style was rooted from the ballads of the French Canadians who settled to North America from France in the 17th and 18th centuries and were forcefully migrated from Eastern Canada to Louisiana during the Great Expulsion of 1755-1764.  I could fill this post up about the rich history of all this or touch on the fact that my late grandma had Acadian roots but it is Monday and am just not in the mood today to take this any further.  Google it if you want to learn more.  For the sake of this record I will over simplify: Acadian music = Cajun music. 

Ambrose Thibodeaux, born in 1903, learned to play accordion at age 15 and was playing dances by 17.  After putting it aside from the married/farmer life, he picked it back up in the 60’s during what was a revival of French Cajun music.  During this time, he played festivals, appeared on radio and tv, won awards, and even traveled to France.  The most notable appearance, according to what scant information I could pull up, was his work on the Revon Reed Radio show out of Eunice, LA.  He performed on Saturday mornings for the good part of five years.  Thibodeaux past away in 1995 .  I am not sure when but he did get inducted into the Cajun Music Hall of Fame (again in Eunice).  His bio on this site is where I pulled most of this info from.

Link to Cajun Music Hall Of Fame

This album, released by La Louisianne Records, in 1966?, features traditional Cajun French songs as well as original compositions by Thibodeux.  Pretty good music and very authentic and representative of the genre.  Thibodeux’s accordion is backed up by the violin of Leon Doucet, the guitar of Nelson Bergeron, the bass of Jack LeBlanc, the occasional vocals of Gervis Quibodeaux, and the triangle of Elmer Thibodeaux.  Not sure if that is a relation of not.

There were a bunch of songs I liked, but in the end, I went with “Two-Step De Musician” simply because it had vocals.

Good little record.  Satisfactory. I probably did want to add more to the post but the time constraints of pulling together next months records and working on two musical acts while pulling down a nine to five have led to this brevity.

The Gordon Highlanders- The Very Best of Sousa

This was $2, only 99 cents less than its original extra special selling price at Sam Goody.  As much as I love listening to marching band albums (sarcasm), I bought this so I could post the three witty insights below (well, I think they are witty anyway).

No one signifies marching band mus, not just universally but here in America like John Phillip Sousa (1854-1932).  As the leader of the US Marine band as well as his own band, “The March King” composed some of the best known marches in history.

At the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, there is a section in the American instrument exhibit for both Sousa and marching bands.  On display, they have a sousaphone, a light weight tuba designed by Sousa to make it easier to march or stand with than a regular concert tuba.  From that time on, I cannot get the image out of my head of Sousa and his counterparts, staying up late at night in a creative frenzy, perhaps driven by the cocaine infused Coca-Cola they had at the time, just riffing out ideas for new instruments.  I wish I could see some of the rejected ideas.

Somehow, the story reminds me of a Mr Show skit of “The Battle of the Megaphone Crooners”.  Mr Show also combined marching band music with Amadeus for this bit as well.

Sousa’s most famous work perhaps is “Stars and Stripes Forever” (hopefully not forever).  But his second famous piece of work you may ask?  I would say “The Gladiator March”.  Unfamiliar with this you say? You probably would recognize it when you heard it as it was the theme of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Why did they go with this song? For the simple reason that it was in the public domain.

Anyway, here is this collection of songs from his marches to his operettas, performed by the Gordon Highlanders under the direction of Douglas Ford.  I believe this was a British army regiment that got Incorporated into the Queen’s Own Highlanders in 1994, to form one group simply named the Highlanders.  Or maybe they are totally unrelated.  Who knows?

For a sample, I went with “Invincible Eagle”.

As far as the record goes, it all really started to sound the same after the third song so meh.