Photo by David Simpson
Jo-El Sonnier
Published in partnership with Télé-Louisiane and Le Louisianais. Read more about our collaboration with the bilingual Louisiana media platform here, and find the French version of this story at louisianais.com.
Jo-El Sonnier, the Grammy Award-winning Cajun and country music star and member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, died on Jan. 13 in Llano, Texas while on tour. He was seventy-seven.
According to Texas Country Music promoter Tracy Pitcox, Sonnier died of a heart attack following a performance at the Llano Country Opry.
After his last song of the night, “Tear Stained Letter,” Sonnier came back on stage for an encore and played “Jambalaya.” “Jo-El mentioned that he needed to rest for just a few minutes before signing autographs,” Pitcox recalled on social media. “Unfortunately, he suffered cardiac arrest and was air-flighted to Austin, where he was pronounced deceased. It is never easy to lose a legend, but he truly spent his final day doing what he loved—entertaining his fans with his loving wife, Bobbye, by his side.”
Sonnier was born to sharecropper parents in rural Rayne, Louisiana in 1946. He learned French as a first language from his parents and grandparents, speaking it exclusively until the age of around seven. In a 2018 interview with Télé-Louisiane, Sonnier recalled, “I listened to French music [Cajun and Zydeco music] on an old AM radio. That’s all we had was two stations. Before five or six in the morning, we listened to music and then we went in the fields and worked.”
Sonnier began playing music from a young age; at three his mother Eunice gave him an accordion, which he played under a wagon while the family worked in the fields. As a teenager, he released independent singles and several albums. By thirteen in 1960, he was leading the Duson Playboys, recording an album at the legendary Swallow Records.
Sonnier played both country and Cajun music throughout his life. In the 1970s, he signed on with Mercury Nashville Records to cut country records before switching back to Cajun music with Rounder Records, where he earned his first Grammy nomination. He signed on with RCA Records, releasing the songs “No More One Time” and “Tear Stained Letter,” that both made it to the Top Ten on the country charts in the 1980s.
In the ‘90s, Sonnier went back to Cajun music and he received two Grammy nominations—in 1997 for his album Cajun Pride and in 2001 for his album Cajun Blood—before being inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2015, he won a Grammy Award for the Best Regional Roots Music Album for his record The Legacy.
Sonnier played on stages in over thirty countries around the world, including the Grand Ole Opry, and he shared those stages with legends like Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, and George Jones. He collaborated on records with artists like Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, and songs he wrote were recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis and George Strait.
With all of his success, Sonnier continuously paid homage to his Louisiana French roots, singing in the language and using it with local Francophones and while he toured in countries like Canada or France. “I play my music in French,” he said in 2018, “to give back to my home, the young generation and the older one. You have to have someone to protect and to preserve the music and the language.”
“We’re trying to save [the language],” he continued. “And me, the way I know how to save it is to write my songs.”
