Since tomorrow is Mardi Gras, it seems fitting to kick off the week with some zydeco from the King of Zydeco himself, Clifton Chenier. Influenced by both early Creole musicians like Amédé Ardoin and blues musicians like Professor Longhair, Chenier took the French Creole music of rural Southwest Louisiana and blended it with blues and R&B to create the sound that became known as zydeco. And unlike other Cajun/Creole accordionists, Chenier preferred the louder, more flexible piano accordion to the smaller, more traditional diatonic. But, as he liked to tell his son C.J. Chenier, “whatever you put into this instrument, that’s what you get out of it.”
