Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues (American Made Music Series)

A search for the sources and sounds of an often overlooked sister genre of Cajun and zydeco music Publishers Weekly Don't fret if you never notice the latest swamp pop hit blaring out of the music store at the mall. The sad truth is, you probably won't find many of the artists mentioned in this thoroughly researched and well-documented book alongside the Jerry Lee Lewis or Neville Brothers discs. Unless, that is, you live deep in the heart of Louisiana bayou country, where this frisky subgenre of rock and roll really has its hold. If swamp pop never garnered broad national attention, this anonymity may have been a blessing, allowing the various influencesmostly acoustic Creole and Cajun folk music and Detroit- and Chicago-style electric rhythm and bluesto evolve uninterrupted into an even more flavorful musical gumbo. Written for the serious musicologist more than for the casual radio listener, Swamp Pop simultaneously chronicles the achievements of the subgroup's earliest movers and shakers (Johnny Preston, Cookie and the Cupcakes) as well as the efforts of its few contemporary practitioners (C.C. Adcock). Bernard forgoes drawing many parallels to better-known bands or subgenres, but Creedence Clearwater Revival and their San Francisco peers in the '60s and this country's current underground garage-band scene immediately pop to mind. That said, Bernard's annotated discography and endnotes should lead the most curious reader in the right direction. (Aug.) Here is the exciting story of swamp pop, a form of Louisiana music more recognized by its practitioners and their hits than by a definition. Drawing on more than fifty interviews with swamp-pop musicians in south Louisiana and southeast Texas, Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues finds the roots of this often overlooked, sometimes derided sister genre of the wildly popular Cajun and zydeco music. In this first book to be devoted entirely to swamp pop, Shane K. Bernard, son of the notable swamp-pop musician Rod Bernard, uncovers the history of this hybrid form invented in the 1950s by teenage Cajuns and black Creoles. Putting aside the fiddle and accordion of their parents' traditional French music to learn the electric guitar and bass, saxophone, upright piano, and modern drumming trap sets of big-city rhythm-and-blues, they created a spicy new music that arises from the bayou country.