00:00:00.079 - 00:00:22.309

What is the name of your father? And your mother? That his name was Alfie Bear. And Mama was Annie mot. Well, was music a big part of y'all's life when you were Children. I know your father played the accordion. Yes. Uh, daddy was a tenant form

00:00:22.319 - 00:00:44.770

a sharecropper and to supplement his income, he started playing back in 1947 and I was an only child. You were and in the country there was nothing else to do except play music. And uh some other people around there had some rooster fighters, rooster fighting, which

00:00:44.779 - 00:01:00.830

was another sport that they enjoyed. So daddy started playing music and, uh he uh bought me a guitar and I guess it was around 10 or 11 and he put it in my neck and he said so beat on it. And through the help of friends,

00:01:00.840 - 00:01:15.639

I started to learn from them and started playing music but nothing because I just thought I would follow him whenever there was a place in the car. If there was a place in the car, I would get in the car. In fact, I remember we were

00:01:15.650 - 00:01:29.400

playing one night at the and swords and saw where you all live, be you a club. And I was coming back, we would come back one night from the dance and I had my guitar standing up in between the front and the back seat and I

00:01:29.410 - 00:01:49.559

was sitting on the back seat with it and we stopped to make a left turn and somebody from in the back came and, uh, hit us in the back and busted that guitar to splinters, the toothpicks. So, so I just a total loss and the company

00:01:49.569 - 00:02:03.120

didn't pay for it. The people that ran into us and have an insurance or whatever. I don't remember the case, but I would follow them around and started playing like that. And, uh, were they calling themselves the veteran playboys when they started, they started out with

00:02:03.129 - 00:02:21.639

the play. Well, where did you live? What area did you live in? In Point Noir in the country by about five miles, I guess west of Point. Well, you must have played the accordion though. All your youth before he started playing dance. Yeah, he started when

00:02:21.649 - 00:02:36.800

he was 13, he started back when he was 13. He started playing music and then he got married, of course, he still had an accordion and, uh, in the thirties and the forties, he got rid of it. He sold it and then, uh, when he started

00:02:36.809 - 00:02:57.009

playing music again after the people started after the war, when the people started coming back from the war or have ended, they got anxious to hear their own music again. And that's when the popularity started to come out. Is that when the research of the accordion

00:02:57.020 - 00:03:14.139

came back to, is that when people started like wanting the accordion a lot again, people were, people were so glad to get back because war is hell. They tell me I've never been through it and they were so glad to get back. Plus the fact that

00:03:14.149 - 00:03:29.589

the soldiers had sent some of their part of their pay home. You see, and they were anxious to get back to living, to enjoying life. Get back to the roots, so to speak. So we started to play music that has started, I should say in the

00:03:29.949 - 00:03:45.130

first of all, I'll, I'll get back a little bit by a couple of it. When they first started out, there was no Guardian in the band. It was a bunch of all veterans that got together and daddy was not a veteran. He had never been to

00:03:45.139 - 00:04:02.029

war. So the people started on asking for the Guardian in the dance hall when they would play. So that's when they started to join him in the back. And daddy was the only one that was not a veteran. He had never been in the service. So

00:04:04.039 - 00:04:22.700

by then I was getting to be a teenager and then later on natural, some musicians, you can't keep them all the time for different reasons. To quit. Or, uh, the guitar gradually, I took the guitar and started the rhythm. Then I went to s steel guitar

00:04:22.709 - 00:04:41.690

back in 1951 and I put the rhythm guitar off his side and I started steel guitar and I started singing and gradually the musicians started to go by the wayside and you keep on a tremendous turnover in the musicians because of different reasons. Other people offered

00:04:41.700 - 00:05:00.089

them different pay and they leave for different reasons. So, um, how about, how old were you then? When you started playing the steel? Oh, really? You were young then? Uh, no one. Let me wait a minute. That's when you start playing the guitar. I start that.

00:05:00.100 - 00:05:16.660

Right. It's, I, I'm a nerd. I started playing the steel when I was 17, I played, started playing guitar when I was 11 or 12. And then five years later. So back in 51 I started playing steel and then out of the bar is the one

00:05:16.670 - 00:05:31.010

that told me, he said, sure. He said all the bands have steels now. He said we have to up step our grade and get up to go and do something about it. So I was 17. I was wrong. Yeah, 17. So it around at 51 when

00:05:31.019 - 00:05:48.679

the steel started getting popular. That's about when the study. Well, um, what did all these songs that, who wrote these songs? Did your father write these songs like Lavos de la Belle and Kat 12. Nobody else ever has. I've never heard any of these songs by

00:05:48.690 - 00:06:02.950

anybody but you, I wrote them all. Let me make sure I've got my title. You wrote all the words. Did you just make them up as you went along or did you actually concentrate on writing them or would you be there? Like, where did the tunes

00:06:02.959 - 00:06:35.299

come from? The JF, for example, is an old tune. You see, I know, LA Yeah. But then the words, there's only one line in that particular song that says, there's only one line in that particular song. But the original tune is LA FHC. OK. But then

00:06:35.309 - 00:06:52.929

I had a story to tell and I needed a tune. So I had the tune from the old tune. So this friend of mine, his wife deserted him and she left him. You hear a lot of times about the husband deserting the wife, but this is

00:06:52.940 - 00:07:08.079

an opposite thing. He was a carpenter and she left him with a bunch of kids in the house and he told me crying one day, he said, Shirley says we're not going to get back together. He said, I thought I had bluffed her. He says, I

00:07:08.089 - 00:07:19.459

told her that I could not work and take care of the kids. So he says, I told her if you want to, don't want to take care of the kids, you don't want to come back to me. I'm gonna, we're gonna have to just, uh, give

00:07:19.470 - 00:07:35.109

them up for adoption. And he said, I thought, right, I thought that whenever he says, whenever she would get down to the real nitty gritty that she would not sign to give those kids away. And she said she bluffed me, she signed to give them away.

00:07:36.320 - 00:07:57.600

So I wanted to tell that and I had the tune. So I decided to put that in words in the song. Now, the opposite side was it from an old 78 that my daddy and Ay Bar had put on a 78. And the record came out

00:07:57.609 - 00:08:14.040

bad. It was badly distorted and it was the old China Bowl special for the simple reason that they were playing at the China Bowl club in Bristol at the time. So I just redone the thing and renamed it Kelly 12. 0, is that what that is?

00:08:14.380 - 00:08:34.140

But it is the old China Bowl special one that when you sing that, um What does it say? What does it say? Tell me the words are uh because this is, it's about a K, it's Kelly K means uh it's a man that loves his wife

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and he looks up in the sky and he's wondering which star is she in the sky? I know she's in heaven. Oh, that's what I thought it said. Mark said. No, he's not saying that. Mark said you want to kill it. Well, down clk two. In

00:08:51.169 - 00:09:20.609

other words. He knows she's in heaven and he's asking at, uh, K Kelly to down clk to, or something to that effect. I, I'll have to, I'd have to play the record to say, 00, he's looking and she doesn't come back and he's lonesome and, but

00:09:20.619 - 00:09:34.150

he thinks she's dead or, or, or is he just dreaming about her because, you know, she's not dead and the son did you mean it to be dead? And he's just, uh, you couldn't mean it. I guess you could mean it either dreaming or dead. Mhm.

00:09:35.900 - 00:09:53.539

And then, yeah. Ok, because this particular man who sang it now had lost his wife. Uh, ok, you mean the China, the china ball? That's right. You see, Adam had lost his first wife and she was a devil, which was, by the way was, uh Benton's

00:09:53.549 - 00:10:15.419

sister. Did you know that Ben Dale? I used to work now, wait a minute, I got to get this. Ok, Adam Hebert was married to Viola Viola Dagle and that's Vin's sister. Very neat. And you see, she was a very good person and she died. And

00:10:15.429 - 00:10:31.059

then, so he was really singing that song and he had words sort of like what you're singing because I haven't heard his version of that. I want to get that record too. And on the opposite side, he had put 99 year old waltz and he had

00:10:31.070 - 00:10:48.549

called it the Unis waltz. But then the, the 78 went by the wayside. I used to have a carpet but it disappeared. I don't know where it's at. I don't know. People borrow and you don't forget it, forget to bring it back. I see. Ok. So

00:10:48.559 - 00:11:02.239

you just kind of used his theme in there and it's the same tune too. Uh huh. And then what about the old Home Waltz Home Walls? That was a, more, that are completely made up myself. That's a beautiful one. And you would you sit in and,

00:11:02.250 - 00:11:14.530

like, work on them or would they just come to your head while you were playing? Like you would play these tunes and you just started making them up. Daddy. You see, whenever we made your fe it was such a popular song and we needed something else

00:11:14.539 - 00:11:28.469

and daddy would constantly say, well, now we'll have to put something else. Now, why don't you write something and we'll put it and you just have to do your homework. You gotta sit down and try to said something in the words in the song that somebody

00:11:28.479 - 00:11:46.010

else has not said before. That's what it bears down to. In other words, Hank Williams used to say, unless you've lived it, you can't ride it. And I used to think of situations that would come to mind and something that had never been done. There's like

00:11:46.020 - 00:12:00.450

a lot of people say, oh, but that Tish Macro we had often heard in the old, in the country in the old times used to have a lot of little crooked roads everywhere. We never had somebody put it to words and music. That's right. You know,

00:12:00.460 - 00:12:19.359

when I was writing the words the other day I said, Mark, what does that mean? I thought you were saying gro and he said no, no cro and just like, uh, that song that, uh, uh shit Tai. It's about a man who, uh, she, she and

00:12:19.369 - 00:12:40.419

most married his young daughter and uh, she's too young and he says I'm gonna steal you and uh, wait for me. But they all pump that old rusty pump. Have you any pump through here? And people had often seen all abandoned houses where they had nothing

00:12:40.429 - 00:13:00.619

left but the pump on the Well. So I'm trying to, you evoking old feelings in people and sentimental thoughts, something that you see every day and you take it for granted. That is a great idea just like uh a but you can chan uh la BGE

00:13:00.630 - 00:13:16.469

de La Belle. Uh people see a oak tree but they don't realize how beauty, how much beauty it's got and everything. So I put Lava de La Bell. I put the, laid it underneath that live oak. That's what I think. That's one of the things that

00:13:16.479 - 00:13:29.669

everybody loves about y'all song so much is that just that, you know, because it's, it makes you feel oh Louisiana, you know, I mean, it's so typically Louisiana um that one too. You just made that one up. Did you just like the idea of an orphan

00:13:29.679 - 00:13:48.760

or La la Belle that time to think of something that is uh dear to everybody's heart. Like an orphan. For example, it's been abandoned. People give kids away. They still do. Unfortunately, not as much, but uh happened here in Church point a few months ago. You

00:13:49.020 - 00:14:03.210

your whole life, your Children just, well, I was trying to get back down to earth, back down to the nitty gritty, not the flashy point of life, but unfortunately, the real honest to God truth, we're not talking about the live oak and the rustic pump and

00:14:03.219 - 00:14:21.229

the crooked road. I'm talking about what is what you're talking about, what means things to people. You really, your heart, the things that get to your heart, not the uh, varnished truth, but the unvarnished truth, so to speak. You're a poet, Shirley. What do you know

00:14:21.239 - 00:14:37.760

a true poet? It's great the way you can tell that your songs like that now, madame Boss. So I used to hear that, uh, that part there. I used to hear my old father saying that as he was going down to the woods to get his

00:14:37.770 - 00:14:54.690

cows because in the old times, you would plant everything that you could possibly use of the land for. You had no pastures, so to speak. So you just push the cow out the door in the morning and she would from the gate and she would take

00:14:54.700 - 00:15:08.729

the road and go where she could. And at night when there was milking time, you had to start to go there and push her back. And so you could milk. But that before the laws that came into being that you could have livestock on the road,

00:15:08.820 - 00:15:23.359

you'd push them out on the gate and they take the sides of the road where they had grass and sometimes they wander up to the woods and you'd have to walk to the woods and push her back. So my grandfather had a walking stick. He didn't

00:15:23.369 - 00:15:38.440

need it, a walking stick just to have it. And then, uh, how many times I've seen him walk down to the woods and just push the car back to his bone so he could look and on going and coming. He would sing. Madame Boche, your grandfather.

00:15:38.450 - 00:16:03.580

This is, what was his name? Oo, um Ozemie to spell that Ozemie, right? And they call him meme meme for his nickname. And that was your dad's dad. Now, um, what was your home situation like you lived on a farm and you were sharecroppers and o

00:16:03.780 - 00:16:18.859

may live with you. When you were living, he was living in a separate house. You see, we were living in our house and he was living in his house. His family was all grown. So him and his wife would live near. It was, it wasn't far,

00:16:19.099 - 00:16:34.380

we'd visit. But, but, but you would see him with his cattle and if you had a milk cow back then you didn't have a herd, you had a milk cow. You were, you were doing fine. You had two or three hogs and 12 or 13 of

00:16:34.409 - 00:16:54.950

uh, 12. I said 12 or 1312. 0, I have a bunch of chickens. You were doing? All right. All right. I'm not using very good English here. I'm doing like a Cajun. Listen, it sounds great. Ok. That's really interesting. So, did you work in the, with

00:16:54.960 - 00:17:11.290

your dad or did you go to school or did? In fact, uh, whenever I, I go to school and sometimes I pick a sack of cotton before I get to the bus. What age did you start school? Well, it's the usual age. Uh, I guess 60,

00:17:11.329 - 00:17:22.900

you said you went, you went all the way through school? I went all the way through high school. Mama was always sick and daddy would keep on telling me he was always in the field by himself. Son, go to school. I don't want you to be

00:17:22.910 - 00:17:39.380

doing what I have to do because he didn't have an education. He couldn't afford the jobs during the war. Whenever they had the war plants in Lake Charles, he did work for a brief time and the chemical plants. But then it, uh, for some reason he

00:17:39.390 - 00:17:57.229

didn't stay there. He, he went over there and he came back and he kept on until 1957. That's when hurricane Aldre flattened everybody. The forms just wiped that. Y just uh I mean, just to get the cotton and just laid it flat. So we said, son,

00:17:57.239 - 00:18:12.770

what do you think I should do? I said that is a good for and he was getting sick. He had autism, tachycardia and probably sugar diabetes at the time. He didn't know it existed because you back then you couldn't diagnose these things like you can. Now

00:18:13.359 - 00:18:34.589

prac tachycardia is a fluttering of the heart. So he started getting sick at age 42. So we applied for and got welfare and to supplement his income, he would play dances again because the welfare check was not very much so that I always had a meager

00:18:34.599 - 00:18:52.280

living. Well, um, you said that these veterans got your dad to come and play the accordion and then when you could fit in the car, you'd come along and play the guitar. But so it was Bill Mott's veteran playboys, right? And then later, um, didn't it

00:18:52.290 - 00:19:05.550

become your dad's band? Because Bill moved out from in the country and he went to Lake Charles? Ok. So a big city, you stayed home? Y'all were still living in Pointe Noire or did you move back over here? When did you come to church? I came

00:19:05.560 - 00:19:28.790

to Church Point. Uh, daddy stayed over there, by the way, until a few years ago before he died, moved into town. But, uh, myself, I stayed in the country until 19 58 and I moved to town. But daddy was still living, like I said, until I

00:19:28.800 - 00:19:48.510

guess about five years ago, out on his house, out in the same house. Y that we're brought up in. No. Well, well, the hurricane, I guess what the, no, the, the houses were all right. They were just strictly flatten out the crops but the weather's brutal

00:19:48.520 - 00:20:11.410

down here. Well, that was that particular time. A hurricane, thank the Lord has come and gone since then. And we've never had one that bad. I hope they do it. I think I'd, it would scare me to death. Let's see. Um, so what was your home

00:20:11.420 - 00:20:28.010

life like as a child? You said your mom was sick a lot? E even as a child, was she sick? Did you have to help? She started getting sick? Uh, she had, uh, a breast removed in the twenties and she had a hysterectomy and she started

00:20:28.020 - 00:20:53.680

getting nerve problems. She took 85 shock treatments. Good night. She has been stable ever since then. On lithium. It's a drug that keeps him stabilized. And last June she had an aneurysm on the brain. You had to operate. She's been in a nursing home. Well, I,

00:20:54.020 - 00:21:08.939

it's gonna be 2.5 years in September. I mean, three years. Excuse me? 2.5 years. Well, when you were little, then she was going through a lot of physical problems. Did you have to help her in the house or could she still cook? And what was your

00:21:08.949 - 00:21:27.819

home life? Like as a, I had to go to school every day. And then when I get back I have that in the field in the winter time. Well, that naturally there was nothing to do except perhaps we had some more what you call a stock.

00:21:29.510 - 00:21:46.359

And, uh, it's, uh, it was uh machine that would break the stalks of the cotton down so that the winter would make them rot. And then in spring where you could start all over by plowing the ground. So it's like a fertilizer kind of thing. I

00:21:46.489 - 00:22:01.180

mean, it, it would go, there was a roll of type with cutter bars and it would roll on top of the rose and it would just flatten the stalks. Oh, I see. And that we, you do butcher in the winter time. You have daddy always had

00:22:01.189 - 00:22:16.180

a bunch of hogs. You'd make sausage and crackings and boudin and all that good stuff. And they did that. You didn't have any way to preserve it except put them in big old croc jars and just take the sausages, curl it up in there as much

00:22:16.189 - 00:22:29.140

as you could up to the top and just take the grease that you, when you rendered the crackings, you had to take the grease and poured all over all that stuff. And that would preserve the sausage and the rise where you had rise from the neighboring

00:22:29.150 - 00:22:46.430

communities who, uh, flat rice and you could get them for cheap rice. So you had your rice, you had your sausage and you help your dad with all this. Yeah, it was pretty small. But so you had to prepare all the hog, you prepared your food.

00:22:46.439 - 00:23:00.650

The hogs got that. You had your rice and then you had your gardens. Did you all do? Um, no. Uh, we had very few uh uh garden mama, mom and mom and daddy. As far as back as I can remember, daddy would make a couple of

00:23:00.660 - 00:23:17.219

rows in the uh, field. But as far as garden is concerned, uh, no. Uh, he, we never didn't make too much of a big garden. So you mainly ate pork and things that came from the pork and the rice, rice and, and gravy and sausage and

00:23:17.229 - 00:23:35.030

meat. That basically was the main staple. You didn't have any, too much vegetables that I can. Uh, that sounds good to me. Well, that's the reason, unfortunately where there's a lot of people today that are sick because they didn't get a good balanced diet when they

00:23:35.040 - 00:23:45.410

were young for some reason. Yeah, I was saying that to mark, I was saying it seemed to me like a lot of people here don't eat many vegetables, but he said that he thinks a lot of people have gardens and eat a lot of like whole

00:23:45.420 - 00:23:58.589

okra, you know, and that's the problem. They don't have enough gardens. They go to the store and they buy it in cans and order the frozen. It's not as good as when you pick it out of the garden. I ordered in my business out of it

00:23:58.630 - 00:24:13.050

carries me all over the place and people I can count on the fingers of my two hands, the number of gardens that I know that's the reason why those uh farmers markets are doing so well on the side of the road because people don't have time

00:24:13.189 - 00:24:24.130

to buy fresh there. But that's the reason that those people are doing so well because the people don't have time because of the economy, the man and the woman has to work. Yeah. You don't have to see them by the garden. Have the time. Yeah, I

00:24:24.150 - 00:24:41.609

know it is an unfortunate thing include about your music and in your life that you think and about your dad and his music that you think would be good. Well, if it wouldn't, I'll tell you what, if it wouldn't have been for my dad to play

00:24:41.619 - 00:25:04.089

music. I have had a bad start in life when I got married. I had $800 and if it wouldn't have been for dancers, I wouldn't have had that cause he couldn't give me the first knicker. Mm Yeah. We're just getting by on that farm. So you,

00:25:04.109 - 00:25:18.979

so through the dances, you all got most of your luxuries in life and, and gave you kind of a dowry, not a dowry for some money to take with you. Well, when did you start selling insurance? Was that your main job for you? I started selling

00:25:18.989 - 00:25:40.109

insurance when I was 20 years old. That's been some 30 years ago come this coming October. I was a, first of all when I got married in 52 I went to work for Moet packing company as a bookkeeper. And it took me three months to realize

00:25:40.119 - 00:25:59.729

that the roof over my head was a no, no. Then I went to work as a salesman for or can walk on selling furniture in Opelousas. And I got there in the morning I started dusting furniture and I was selling furniture to people that would come

00:25:59.739 - 00:26:15.910

in and they couldn't talk English and they spoke French. So I was the interpreter was the salesman. And after about a year, I started selling insurance. You said it'd be independent, right? As I was on the road and I was letting that good old country air

00:26:15.920 - 00:26:31.750

hit me. So it's gonna be 30 years. The first of October I'm sitting. That's funny cause they, the three people I know the most about were like you and I've interviewed Dewey Val and more all of y'all are like that you're independent, you wanna be out,

00:26:31.760 - 00:26:44.819

you don't wanna work for anybody he sold insurance, Dewey Val. You know, just getting up there in the fresh air and being on your own, your own man. You know, I don't blame you all. And he was a good friend of mine. We played music about

00:26:44.829 - 00:27:22.160

a couple three weeks ago. Oh, really? Oh, ok. That was good. I like to have heard that. There's a plaque that I wanted to do and be awarded to die. The water. distract to him. After he died, you can read on that

00:27:22.699 - 00:27:46.229

to a Bergeron for a lifetime devotion to Cajun music as an accordion player. Granted post humorously by Saddle Tramp riding club that was from the Mardi Gras Club or Saddle Tramp is the club which, uh, sponsored the first Acadian Cardiac Contest and they had been active

00:27:46.239 - 00:28:05.790

in the Mardi Gras years before that. And that is that a local club is a club. It's a, it's a club with horses that people don't think. It's like when they say club, like a club dance hall, it's not the type of a club. Of course,

00:28:05.800 - 00:28:18.339

they've got a hole that they make dances there. But the club itself is people with horses and you're right. All right. That's really nice. I know that's a prize for you to have.