Swamp Pop Should Go On Forever

Half Domino, half fais do-do

January 29, 2024 3:10 PM

David Simpson

Learn about the Louisiana French musical traditions from which swamp pop came in The Origins of Louisiana French Music Genres, as well as how Cajun music and zydeco emerged from the same tradition, in The History of Cajun Music, 1930s to Today and The World of Louisiana Zydeco.

Learn more about the history of the instrumentation in Louisiana French genres, as well as the historical venues the music was played in, here:

The Instruments of Cajun, Zydeco, and Swamp Pop Music

Let's Go Dancin': The Evolution of Louisiana French Music Venues

You can also find a Spotify Playlist to accompany your reading, featuring the artists and songs included in this article, here:

In the 1950s, while Black Creole musicians were leaning towards R&B and Cajun musicians were beginning to incorporate popular influences into the traditional styles of playing, a generation of performers was taking one step deeper into the realm of popular American culture. While Cajun musicians drew from the influences of stars like Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, Sr., too—the strain of Louisiana music that would become swamp pop brought them closer to the forefront. Often performed by seasoned Cajun and Creole musicians willing to adapt to the demands of more mainstream audiences, the genre was perhaps most concisely described by saxophonist Harry Simoneaux as “half Domino, half fais-do-do”.

[Read this: "The Phrase, 'Elvis Has Left the Building' has Louisiana origins]

Swamp pop’s earliest pioneers emerged first from the Black Creole R&B communities as zydeco was just finding its shape, and included Guitar Gable and the Musical Kings, Elton Anderson, Lil’ Bob and the Lollipops, and Cookie and his Cupcakes (originally The Boogie Ramblers), who penned the 1959 charting hit “Mathilda”. Other major hits that defined the genre during its heyday, which spanned the late 1950s and early ‘60s, include Warren Storm’s “Prisoner’s Song,” Rod Bernard’s “This Should Go On Forever,” and Jimmy Clanton’s “Just a Dream”. Bobby Charles’s “Later Alligator” was later covered by Bill Haley & His Comets as “See You Later Alligator”—which reached number six on the Billboard charts and is credited with popularizing the catchphrase of the same name.

[Read these stories on Floyd Soileau's role in promoting swamp pop as a genre through his label Jin Records:

The term “swamp pop” can actually be attributed to British music journalist Bill Millar in the early 1970s, who used it in a snappy headline to describe this strain of “Cajun rock ‘n’ roll” styles he observed thriving in South Louisiana in the ‘60s. By then, the heyday was coming to an end, with the British invasion commanding most music lovers’ attention worldwide. Ironically, it was Britain that re-energized swamp pop in the ‘70s; something about the Old World sounds sung in this altogether new way appealed to a cult British fandom. In 1974, while Americans were listening to Elvis’s cover of Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” on repeat, British audiences were shoving Johnnie Allan’s swampy version to the top of their charts. This new wave of interest in the genre, which now had a name, sent bands overseas to tour, and re-motivated local record producers to get Swamp Pop bands back in the studio.

The 1970s Cajun Renaissance, with its focus on returning to Louisiana’s French music roots, was a blow to the esteem of swamp pop, which was itself a product of Americanization. As Louisiana recommitted itself to its folk origins, it could find little room to dedicate to its most distinctly stylized musical child, and Swamp Pop started to lose its “cool factor”. While up and coming musicians in the region were drawn into the world of creative tradition offered by Cajun and Zydeco, for decades the genre mostly endured in local performances of classics by its own aging originators. Thus, swamp pop stayed stable, with very little development—facing an almost certainly inevitable end with the death of its pioneers.

Still, the influence of swamp pop on broader culture cannot be ignored—its stylistic traits emerged in songs by New Orleans artists the likes of Fats Domino, Dr. John, and Slim Harpo. Rockabilly star Jerry Lee Lewis recorded covers of swamp pop ballads, including “Mathilda,” and Jimmy Donley’s “Born to be a Loser”. Elements of the genre can also be detected in the songs of internationally recognized performers the likes of Elvis and even the Beatles (South Louisianans have long held suspicions that “Oh! Darling” has an Acadiana source). Swamp pop has also inspired new generations of Cajun and Zydeco performers, particularly those playing with “prog rock” and other more diverse stylistic arenas, such as Zachary Richard, Beausoleil, and The Revelers.

Thanks in part to the popularity of the collaborative supergroup project Lil Band ‘O Gold, founded by C.C. Adcock and Steve Riley in 1998, the demand for swamp pop performances began to increase throughout the early 2000s. Dedicated to reviving vintage swamp pop classics, the group featured pioneer Warren Storm, and later Clarence Jockey Etienne, as the centerpiece, along with a collective of the region’s most esteemed performers across the Louisiana roots spectrum. The group not only shot adrenaline into Storm’s career, but into the landscape of swamp pop—re-animating the stage as an avenue for new, aspiring Louisiana musicians.

[Read these stories about Lil Band O' Gold performers:

Today, despite the odds, swamp pop sustains its place—if less prominent than that of Cajun and zydeco—within the musical tapestry of Louisiana. Interestingly, the fanbase seems to have shifted across the Basin to recenter itself in Ascension Parish, which annually hosts the Swamp Pop Music Festival. The standards continue to regularly play on the airwaves at local radio stations across the state, from Houma to Lafayette to Ville Platte to Southwest Texas.

More contemporary bands performing today include Don Rich (who might be credited with the popularity of the genre east of the Atchafalaya), Ryan Foret & Foret Tradition, Bobby Page & the Riff Raffs, and Damon Troy—whose “Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda Loved You” has become a classic. The genre is also finally extending itself into more experimental direction at the hands of Ben Usie and his band Bruisey Peets, who has self-consciously capitalized on the wonderfully campy, over-the-top qualities of swamp pop to release their “piano-rooted, queer swamp pop” record Poached Eggs in 2021.

All the while, many of the original swamp pop players are still out and about, playing, as the late Storm once promised, until they “have to pry the drumsticks from my cold, dead hands.” In 2022, Tommy McClain released I Ran Down Every Dream—his first album in over forty years at age eighty-two, a collaboration with a cadre of a dozen other swamp pop advocates and performers that references his 1966 Top 20 hit “Sweet Dreams”. The project caught national attention, with coverage from the New York Times and Rolling Stone, who had not forgotten McClain’s, and swamp pop’s, contributions to Louisiana music, and to Americana as a whole.

Recommended Reading/Resource List:

Related

The World of Louisiana Zydeco

The History of Cajun Music, 1930s to Today

La Musique Francaise de Louisiane

Let's Go Dancin': The Evolution of Louisiana French Music Venues