“I grew up in Mamou, Cajun Capitol of the World,” says DesHotels.

“I was ten years old, standing outside the Joy Theatre in Mamou, Louisiana, waiting for my dad to pick me up at the end of a movie. One half-block down from the Joy was the famous French Casino. This was a Wednesday night. All of the dances back then were held on Wednesday nights. I heard some music I’d never heard before, even from Mamou. It was Cajun French music. I went up to that door and I remember a taxi cab driver [a guy that went by “Choupique” McCauley] standing there with a beer in his hand, and I asked him, ‘What kind of music is that?’ and he said ‘Mais, cher, that’s French Music!’ It turned out to be Cyprien Landreneau.  [He] was the first to really leave Mamou and introduce that music to the rest of the world.

“This French Casino—when they weren’t playing French music, they had stars like Jimmy Clanton in there. It wasn’t called swamp pop back then, but that’s the kind of music that was being played. I guess this was around 1958, when the Boogie Kings were starting to play.

“By far, the hot place to go out was the Evangeline Club in Ville Platte, eight miles from Mamou. They had everyone from Fats Domino to Willie Nelson, back in the day before they were big names. Remember, this was the recovery from the war in the late-1950s. The Evangeline Club as well as the Rendezvous Club in Ville Platte were hoppin’; with Fort Polk about an hour and a half from Ville Platte, these towns were loaded with soldiers. It was the only place they had to go.”

DesHotels explained the loose enforcement of the drinking laws when he was a fifteen-year old going to these clubs. “When you’d pay your admission, they’d give you a ticket and fold the ticket over and staple it [to your sleeve]. If your ticket was folded over, you could dance and stay all night but you couldn’t drink. The ones that could drink had an open ticket on their collar. I could get around that.”

The clubs depicted in DesHotels’ Internet slideshows have largely faded into memory. On Highway 190 outside of Eunice, you can imagine the parking lot of the old Purple Peacock packed to capacity with some swamp pop singer serenading the old folks and underage drinkers alike, but it’s unlikely that we will see that parking lot full again. Bars close, music trends change, it’s the way things are. Thanks to people like DesHotels, all we need to do is fire up a browser window and let history replay itself through image, memory, and song.

Details. Details. Details.

Richard DesHotels’ videos can
be found on his YouTube channel:
youtube.com/user/Rdezo.

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