Clifton Joseph ‘CJ’ Chenier to perform at Gateway City Arts

Feb. 20, 2019 | Craig Harris

CJ Chenier performs March 1 at Gateway City Arts on the first day of the “Back Porch Festival.”
Photo by Craig Harris

Playing accordion “wears you down,” said the late originator of zydeco, Clifton Chenier’s son, Clifton Joseph “C.J.” Chenier. “Saxophone was my first instrument but made the transition to accordion while I was playing with my dad. He had that big Alba accordion with MIDI electronics. I played that standing up and that’s what started my back going bad. I was young and didn’t feel it until it happened.”

Since his father’s death from diabetes-related kidney disease in December 1987, Chenier has pursued his own path. “I wasn’t ready to take over the band,” he remembered. “It took me a while. When I first started, I ran everybody away. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to handle a show but I stopped trying to be anybody else. When I made my first album, I made up my mind to be me. It came as a gift from God. All of a sudden, I transformed into what I was becoming. It just happened.”

Defining zydeco as “the older big brother of Cajun music,” Chenier will be celebrating Mardi Gras at Gateway City Arts, in Holyoke, on March 1, the first day of Signature Sound’s annual Back Porch Festival. Although he incorporates a variety of influences into his music, true zydeco happens when the arrangement strips down to accordion, drums, and washboard (frotttoir).

“That’s what my daddy called ‘zydeco,’” Chenier explained. “When you’d go to a dance (originally called a “la-la”), you’d hear waltzes, blues, and ballads, but every time that he’d say, ‘Do the zydeco,’ it stripped down. It got so popular that instead of people saying they were going to the ‘la-la,’ they started saying that they were going to the zydeco. It pushed ‘la-la’ out of the way.”

Port Arthur-born Chenier, 61, grew up in “the part of Texas intertwining with the part of Louisiana where Zydeco came from.”

He said, “Youngsters [today] are playing, what I call, ‘Nouveau Zydeco’. It’s not the traditional style but something that has more hip-hop to it.

“[When I was a kid], people knew about the music through my dad,” he continued, “But zydeco was never on the radio. The only place you’d hear it would be at a dance.”

Inspired by funk and R&B groups, including Earth, Wind, & Fire, Kool & the Gang, Brass Construction and Mandrill, Chenier played with a “garage band” as a teenager. “We had a following,” he said, “But, once I started playing with my dad, my focus shifted. I liked zydeco before but, when I saw how much fun people were having, it really got me.”

Recording since the 1950s, when he was on the same label as Little Richard, Clifton Chenier spent years little known beyond Louisiana and Texas’ French Triangle. “Think about the times,” said his son. “He was a black man singing French songs and playing the accordion.”

The music, however, was infectious. “Once people heard him,” said C.J., “they were stuck. If the people who ran the music industry put him in the right places, he would have captured even more people.”

Just as the elder Chenier was breaking through, he became ill. He traveled with a dialysis machine but continued to perform. “He had a stroke,” said C.J., “so I know how much it can mess your head when you can’t play like you know you can. He was always natural with the accordion. After he got sick, he sometimes couldn’t sing…or even talk. He’d get the hiccups and they would be continuous but he wouldn’t quit.”

Three years after assuming leadership of his father’s band, C.J. took a break to play on Paul Simon’s “Rhythm of the Saints” in 1990. “I played the same thing 15 times,” he remembered. “He went through every take, took a part from here, a part from there, and put them together until he got what he wanted from me. He was a perfectionist.”

Chenier maintains a busy schedule with the Red Hot Louisiana Zydeco Band. “I’ve had years where I’ve played 250 shows,” he said, “and years where I’ve only played 75 to 100. I prefer the former. I’m a road dog, not a homebody. My family knows that I like traveling.”

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