As someone perpetually trying to make sense of Louisiana music, the Swamp Gold compilations from Jin records in Ville Platte are a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest. Swamp pop is too loose a thing to be easily defined. “White guys trying to play like Fats Domino” gets you pretty far, but then you consider that many of those Fats Domino songs were written by Louisiana white guys like Bobby Charles, who also cavorted with Clapton and the Rolling Stones. You have black bands like Cookie & the Cupcakes and Lil Bob & the Lollipops that recorded much of the core material that forms the base of the swamp pop repertoire. You have Warren Storm, a blues drummer with a voice as silky as his shirts, Tommy McClain who looked like Waylon Jennings at his most grizzled, yet sang like a teenager from heaven. And then, you have Rufus Jagneax.
Rufus Jagneaux was not a person but a band, and their Jin single “Opelousas Sostan” is one of the more curious artifacts to rise to the surface of this murky genre, adopting some Cajun chank-a-chank, fifties swamp pop bump and the Woodstock-ready ramble of the hippie era. Sam Irwin, former owner of the Corner Bar in Breaux Bridge and frequent Country Roads contributor, said “Every teenager in south Louisiana knew that song. It was everywhere!”
But in his book Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm & Blues, Shane Bernard discusses the controversy surrounding the song.
“The popularity of ‘Sostan’ with the south Louisiana public infuriated some cultural activists and musical purists, who regarded the song as an offensive parody of Cajun music and culture.”
My frequent running partner on these missions, Clarke Gernon, told me that he found himself in a sedate Mamou watering hole being eyed as an outsider, but once he put “Opelousas Sostan” on the jukebox, the place erupted with life, one guy even pulled out a harmonica to play along, just as the members of Rufus Jagneaux did with the instrument, mimicking the Cajun accordion.
“Opelousas Sostan” sticks out as a meta-Cajun song, a song about a guy singing a song, comprised mostly of this repeated verse and chorus:
Opelousas Sostan used to come this way on his way to sing his song, “I can hear the jukebox play."
"Mais, I can hear the jukebox play. Allons ‘vec moi! Bon temps rouler”
I could not reach Rufus Jagneaux front man Benny Graeff to get his part of the story, so I went up to Floyd’s Record Shop in Ville Platte to speak with Floyd Soileau, founder of the Jin records to get the story.
First a word about Floyd’s: If you are looking for any south Louisiana music, be it Cajun, zydeco, gospel, country, swamp pop, whatever, Floyd’s Record Shop has it, and likely, proprietor Floyd Soileau put it out on one of his labels.
“[Benny Graeff] had come up with the name ‘Rufus’ and then we found out there was already a group called Rufus so we thought, well he’s Cajun, let’s call him Rufus Jagneaux. His ‘Opelousas Sostan’ was way ahead of its time, and he had a couple other hits while the group was hot,” explains Soileau. “We’ve had a project in the works for about a year now to release all the Rufus Jagneaux material we have in the vaults.” A number of those songs like the upbeat “Port Barre” and “Haunted House,” a cheery jangle of a tune featuring an encounter with an alien who eats raw meat and “drinks hot grease from the frying pan,” can be found on volumes six and eight respectively of Jin’s Swamp Gold collections. “Opelousas Sostan,” however, is the one that really sticks in people’s minds.
“I had a friend of mine who’d played with the Boogie Kings, Charles Bailey was his name, and he called and said, ‘I have a nephew that’s coming back from a little commune or something in the hills of Tennessee during the winter and he says he wants to make a record. So when he calls you, please listen to him, as a favor to me.’”
That nephew was Rufus Jagneaux’s Benny Graeff, who did call on Soileau. “He told me, ‘We wrote some songs while we were up in the winter in Tennessee and we’d like to make a record. One in particular I think you’ll like.’” When he told him the title, “Opelousas Sostan”, Soileau told Graeff, “With a name like that, I got to hear it. Come on down.”
The young band came into Soilleaux’s recording studio in downtown Ville Platte and nailed it on the first take. “We put the thing out and it just exploded.” John Broven, the English music researcher who coined the term “swamp pop” calls Graeff “a south Louisiana Mick Jagger.”
“It was a simple song, repetitious lyrics, sing-a-long type tune. It was ahead of its time for around here. I had some disc jockeys up in the more northern part of the state that said, ‘Look, we don’t want to play this thing, because if we do, our phones are gonna ring off the hook, and I’m not crazy about the record, so I’m not gonna play it,’” Soileau recounts. “But in the other areas where they did play it, the jukeboxes made it a success for us.”
Soileau explains that in the late sixties and early seventies, jukeboxes played a major role in a song’s popularity. “Back then you had a million, two hundred eighty thousand jukeboxes in the country, so if you had a national hit, you could automatically sell a million copies just for the jukeboxes. This was important because we had limited stations that would play our swamp pop or whatever you want to call our brand of jambalaya music. The jukeboxes supplemented our airplay.”
Soileau told how the jukeboxes were only part of the equation. “I had a jukebox operator that came by me one day and said ‘Floyd, you got a hit record.’ He said down in Oakdale, down in one of those houses, those gals in there, they played that thing twenty-four hours a day. It doesn’t stop. In fact that’s why I’m here. They wore their copy out.’” That single was another of Jin’s hits, Tommy McLain’s “Sweet Dreams.” “He said, ‘you know the women know a hit record when they hear one,’ and he was right. It went on to sell over a million copies for us.”
Unfortunately, the tide has turned on tiny labels like Mr. Soileau’s. “I think the industry shot itself in the foot and in the butt when it decided to kill the forty-five single. Back then, the music fan could stay in touch for a buck or less and have all the latest songs. Today of course they still can with iTunes but it’s not the hard copy anymore. “
Soileau continued to release music on his Maison De Soul, Jin, and Swallow record labels, finding his biggest hit in 1984 with Rockin’ Sydney’s massive hit “Don’t Mess With My Toot Toot,” finding airplay on pop, rock and country stations, and garnering a Grammy. Another high point for him was when Apple Records, the Beatles’ record label, came calling in 1972 to release "Saturday Nite Special" / "Valse De Soleil Coucher" by Cajun band the Sundown Playboys. Today, Soileau still records swamp pop acts and does a good business disseminating Louisiana music through his website and mail order catalog, catching the ear of discerning listeners that still yearn to hear the jukebox play.
Details. Details. Details. Floyd’s Record Shop 434 E Main St Ville Platte, La. (337) 363-2138 facebook.com/Floyds-Record-Shopcom-116602835059891
