Do you like to dance? Do you like Louisiana blues and zydeco?
Evo Bluestein’s band will feature the fabulous Franck Goldwasser (guitar), Kevin Hill (best bassist around), and two great percussionists–Mike Sharp (scrubboard) and John Shafer (drums). Evo plays button accordions and electric fiddle.

 

My Zydeco Background
In the 1970s, Cajun French music came to my awareness and it was somewhat accessible for singing because of the French I had learned, living in Europe with my family. Somehow, I became aware of the blues modes played on button accordion, similar to cross-key blues harmonica. It occurs in white Cajun accordion music but is closer to the blues when played by the French speaking African-American (Creole) musicians. I learned directly from some of the best Cajun and Creole zydeco musicians, in Louisiana, before they passed, and from recordings. I bought my first button accordion from an accordion builder in Eunice, Louisiana in 1986. I loved it! It wasn’t long before Bad Boys Zydeco was formed.

Franck Goldwasser
Some people say the band is best when the guitarist is Franck Goldwasser. That is saying a lot, as we’ve had some good guitarists! Franck is French, from Paris, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to his music. Here is an excerpt of a recent interview I conducted with him.  

“My father returned to Paris after spending a couple of his teenage years in New York. He was very influenced by those two years to the point that kids in school called him ‘the American.’ Back then, the idea of a French child going to America was like going to another planet. He came back to France having been greatly influenced by his experience and that was transferred on to me. My entire childhood was spent in this atmosphere of idealization of American culture.  

When I was nine or ten, my dad turned me on to American folk music–Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, records on the Folkways label. I wore them out until they were falling apart. One record was Songs from the American Civil War. I didn’t even know what they were saying, but I learned the words phonetically.

That was my upbringing–it was America or bust. This is long before I knew anything about blues music. I basically knew that I wanted to come to America. My father wasn’t aware, but he created a monster. I made my first trip to America when I was fourteen and again in the summer of 1976. That’s the year I discovered blues. I went to record stores and played every blues record I could get my hands on. In 1979, I stayed with a family in Boston, for a month. That was the first time I went to blues clubs; although, I was under age. I was into the blues big time, playing guitar. I saw J. B. Hutto at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. The Speakeasy was on Norfolk Street; it’s been torn down, but I’ll never forget the address. I went to the Paradise Club, in Boston, on Mass. Ave.

I knew I had relatives in California because my grandfather’s oldest brother had a son in Oakland. As I studied more about blues, I found out that the music I was really interested in, was west coast blues–that became my focus. The first people I became aware of were T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, and Charles Brown. Those were the giants and the pioneers. By the time I looked up my cousin, T-Bone was dead and there was a new generation like Sonny Rhodes and others I had never even heard of, but I met them when I eventually came out.”

What is zydeco? (sources: Allen Gingold, Ann Savoy, Evo Bluestein)
Zydeco is a peculiar hybrid of French Canadian songs, European instruments, Caribbean and African rhythms, and Creole sensibility. The name is a contraction of a song called “Les Haricots Sont Pas Sale,” which most zydeco bands perform in some form or another. “The snap beans aren’t salty” implies poverty too deep to afford salt pork for seasoning, and it also suggests the rural origins of the music.

In its truest form, zydeco is a hypnotic, rhythmic, repetitive riff for dancing. By now it has been applied to every R&B form, as well as other pop forms. Today, it survives as a popular dance music, with regional dance styles, but you can just get down and boogie any way you feel it.

The old-style bands often would include fiddle in the lineup, in addition to accordions and rub board (scrubboard or frottoir). In the forties and fifties, some players introduced rhythm and blues to the mix. Out went the fiddle, too quiet to stand up to the electric guitars, horns, and drums. The late Clifton Chenier gets most of the credit for creating this sound and for this reason he is the acknowledged King of Zydeco.