"La Valse De Bayou Chene" - Iry Lejeune

Iry Lejeune sang the story of his people, and made them remember who they were.1 The traditional Cajun music would resurface first in his recordings, a young accordion player and singer from the Pointe Noire area of Acadia Parish.  Iry Lejeune became a pivotal figure in a revival fueled by the return of homesick GIs seeking to soothe their soul.2

Iry, who drew heavily from the recorded repertoire of Creole musician, Amede Ardoin and who died at twenty-seven in a car crash in 1955, along with Ardoin is one of the most storied figures in Louisiana French music.3 One of many Ardoin recordings he resurrected was "Valse Des Opelousas" in which was retitled as "La Valse De Bayou Chene" named after a small bayou south of Welsh in Jeff Davis Parish.  After recording the tune for Eddie Shuler's Goldband records, it later became the "Duson Waltz" by Aldus Roger and much later, the "St. Landry Waltz" by Austin Pitre.

O, catin, comment tu veut que moi je m'en vais tout seul,

O, mon nèg, à pas être capable d'aller me rejoindre,

O, bébé, mon j'ai pris et je roulaillé,

Quo faire tit monde c'est dur comme ça d'être dans ma maison.

O, catin, tu m’avais dit que tu pouvais pas me marier,

O, d’autre que toi moi je va’s plaider à tes parents,

O, catin, t’as passé dimanche après-midi,

T’as passé pour me donner ta main, t’as parti en pleurant.

O, catin, c’est les dernières paroles que je veux dire,

Je savais c’est juste rapport à ta famille qui veut plus de moi,

Oh, ye yaille, c’est pas la peine que moi je reste comme ça,

Tout le temps dans les misères à pas être capable, être capable t’avoir.

At his home, he was accompanied by Milton Vanicor on fiddle and Eddie Shuler on guitar. Although venerated for his accordion skills, it is Lejeune's singing that draws the strongest superlatives from writers--that it can "bite and burn and blister the heart" and "encompassed all the pain, loneliness, and hardship of the isolated praire farmers".3  In 1955, leaving the Green Wing Club, he caught a ride home with Lake Charles fiddler J.B. Fuseilier.  As the two men were fixing a flat tire, another car plowed into them.  Fusilier lived but Iry was not so lucky.

Lake Charles American Press
Oct 9, 1955

If this young traditionalist had not appeared when he did, Cajun music would have drowned in the American melting pot of assimilation.1  The late Acadia Parish author Pierre Varmon Daigle wrote:

In [Iry's] music is all the cruel loneliness of our Cajun history.  Not only the loneliness at the time of our exile, but the later years of poverty...It's all there in the music of this almost blind man.  It's there like a dirge, as lonesome as the howl of a March wind around the house at night.  There is his greatness. The feeling , the heart of his music reaching like fingers to your heart.1

Oh, pretty doll, how do you want me to do this all alone?

Oh, my friend, you're not capable of going to join me,

Oh, baby, my I picked up and I roamed around,

What's done, my little everything, it's hard like that to be home.

Oh, pretty doll, you told me you could not marry me,

Oh, other than you, I'm going to plead with your parents,

Oh, pretty doll, you passed by Sunday afternoon, 

You passed by to give me your hand, you left crying.

Oh, pretty doll, this is the last words I want to say,

I knew it's just related to your family, who wants more from me,

Oh, oh my, it's not worth it, for me to stay like that,

Always in misery to not be able, to be able to have you.

1. "Iry Lejeune rescued traditional Cajun music" by Gene Thibodeaux. The Church Point News.  Oct 11, 2008.  
2. Cajun Music: Origins and Development by Barry Jean Ancelet
3. Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a ... By Mark F. DeWitt
4. Lyrics by Francis M

Find:
The Legendary Iry LeJeune (Goldband, 1991)

Iry Lejeune: Cajun's Greatest: The Definitive Collection (Ace, 2003)