Fiddling in the Shadows

Sifting through papers in his office at the Shadows-on-the-Teche visitors center, David Greely came across an 1855 letter from William Frederick Weeks, writing from his plantation, Grand Côte at Weeks Island, to his mother Mary Weeks at Shadows.

Last night Samson came in with his fiddle as he usually does when anyone comes here. He appears to think it incumbent upon him to contribute to the amusement of our guests. His music appeared to inspire Mrs. Hopkins . . . . She was on the floor alone and danced for half an hour in the real old style to the surprise and amusement of us all. Her dancing put all the others in the humor. The young men got Masy, Miss Cobb and Mrs. Hopkins on the floor and they kept it up until 11 o’clock. The gayest crowd that has ever been in my house.

Samson, who was a slave at Shadows, was lame and unable to work in the cane fields. He was assigned maintenance work and was often called upon by the family to entertain guests with his fiddle. (Though, as evidenced by the excerpt above, Greely suspects that Samson saw guests as an opportunity to invite himself to the party and play.)

Samson is one of the most interesting persons Greely has found in the archives, particularly because, like Samson, he plays the fiddle. Greely drives about thirty miles south several days a week from his home in Breaux Bridge to sift through thousands of documents—letters, receipts, photographs, even sheet music—that reveal decades of history at Shadows. The home was built between 1831 and 1834 for sugar planter David Weeks and his wife Mary. The historic house and garden, overlooking the winding Bayou Teche, is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is also a National Historic Landmark.

Greely, who cofounded the group the Mamou Playboys, has been exploring the rich world of Shadows in his role as resident musician through “Art and Shadows,” a pilot program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Visual artist Lynda Frese is also working at the antebellum house. Both will create works inspired by the place and its people: four generations of the Weeks family and the slaves who worked there. Director Pat Kahle expects that the project will bring “a different perspective to the history of the site. Artists see things differently from historians. They’ll be sharing the information through their art. I think they will attract a different audience to the Shadows.”

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Born in Baton Rouge and raised in Denham Springs, Greely, of Irish and Acadian heritage, took a different route to Cajun music from that of most musicians born in Acadiana. When he was three, his parents would call on him to belt out “Sixteen Tons.” Later he sang in a Baptist gospel quartet that visited various churches.

On a trip to New Orleans to hear Black Sabbath when he was seventeen, Greely was mesmerized by an electric fiddle player in the warm-up band. The next day, at a Baton Rouge pawn shop, he bought an acoustic fiddle and two bows. Then he set about teaching himself to play.

“My mom said, ‘Do that in your room or go outside,’” he recalled. “I played a lot. I really put a lot of time into it. But I didn’t even notice the time was passing, it was so much fun. Even now, if I don’t play a couple of hours a day, I’m not happy.”

He soon joined his first band, Cornbread, performing bluegrass and country music at venues in Colorado, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

From 1976 to 1986, he lived in Nashville, where he played country music, and San Antonio, where he played Cajun music on the Riverwalk.

“My grandfather Eddie Theriot was a Cajun fiddler, and I always knew I was going to investigate Cajun music, even though I had never heard him play,” said Greely.

In 1986 he returned to Louisiana, performing solo lunchtime gigs at Mulate’s restaurant in Baton Rouge. At Marc Savoy’s Music Center in Eunice, he met accordionist Steve Riley.

“He was eighteen, and I had never heard of him,” said Greely. “But he was really quite good, and I liked his style. He was living in Baton Rouge, going to LSU; so I invited him to join me on Monday nights at Mulate’s.”

In 1988, Greely and Riley formed the Mamou Playboys. “It was three guys from Mamou and me, so that’s what we called it,” said Greely. The band split its time between playing rural dance halls in South Louisiana and touring internationally.

“Down-home Cajun audiences loved us,” he said. “Old people would try to stump us. They’d say, ‘Can you play “Opelousas Waltz”?’ and we could. We played the same music in Europe and Eunice.”

Greely appeared on thirteen albums by the Mamou Playboys, who have been nominated for four Grammy Awards.

In 1991, Greely won a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts (LDA) to apprentice with the great fiddler Dewey Balfa. “I went out to Basile once a week,” said Greeley. “At my first lesson he told me, ‘You’re a good player, but if you want to sound like me you have to start paying attention.’

“He taught me to pay attention to details. He would play something for me and then I would play it. He’d say, ‘No, you missed this.’ He’d make me imitate him exactly. Once I had learned to listen, he encouraged me to develop my own style.”

Just months after Greely’s time with Balfa ended, the older musician died of cancer at age sixty-five.

Around 1995, Greely added songwriting to his musical skills. “When you spend a lot of time learning and studying, you start producing music of your own,” he said. “Melodies are most important. Sometimes it’s easy, but that’s just luck. It’s like a muscle that has to be developed.”

In 2004, Greely received a fellowship in folklife performance from the LDA. “It was an award for having done good work—five thousand dollars,” said Greely. “I bought a good fiddle with it that I’m still playing today.”

He stayed with the Mamou Playboys until 2011, when he quit owing to a worsening case of tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, exacerbated by playing in loud dance halls.

Greely released his first solo album, the well-reviewed Sud du Sud, in 2009. “It’s a good record, and I’m proud of that,” he said. “It’s a combination of original songs [written by Greely] and traditional ones.”

He is an instructor of Cajun fiddle at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and has taught at music camps and universities around the world. He also has a full touring schedule, with performances in Maine, Rhode Island, and Canada this summer and early fall.

These days he spends more time at Shadows, doing research and testing the acoustics of various rooms, from parlor to pantry.

One of the more interesting family members he’s learned about was Weeks Hall (1894–1958), who left the house and its furnishings to the National Trust. Known as an eccentric artist, Hall invited many famous guests to his home, including writer Henry Miller, who wrote about Shadows in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

Hall also took trumpet player Bunk Johnson (1889–1949) under his wing. Learning that the New Orleans jazz musician had worked at Shadows as a gardener, Greely listened to recordings and fell in love with Johnson’s music.

“I’ve got several ideas for compositions in the tradition of jazz,” said Greely. “I love that music so much. Traditional jazz has so much joy and cleverness in it.”

And Samson the fiddler continues to inspire him. “I’m looking for the right tune to represent him. I wrote one recently that might stick,” said Greely. He invents tunes in various rooms of the house. If he likes one, he records it on his iPhone so he won’t forget it and later develops it on high-quality equipment in his home studio.

The twelve-month Art and Shadows program provides Greely and Frese with studio and performance space. They will participate in public workshops, lectures, master classes, and concerts, culminating in a spring 2015 festival focusing on the artists’ new creations.

“This is a marvelous opportunity to do something I love so much,” said Greely. “To research all that history and produce a body of work from it.”

Standing at the gate outside Shadows, he summed up, “This is a great place to come to work every day.”

Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net. For more information about David Greely, check his website, davidgreely.com.