"J'ai Passe Devant Ta Porte" - Eddie Shuler

Behind his folksy, down-to-earth demeanor, producer Eddie Shuler was a shrewd businessman and the driving force behind Goldband Records.  Shuler was born in Wrightsboro, Texas, the oldest of three children. His parents separated when he was still a child, and the young Shuler worked odd jobs, picking cotton, corn and pecans and loading cottonseeds into boxcars. 

"I was one of those that had to grow up on my own," he says. "I started working when I was 9 years old. All I was trying to do was make a living. I didn't have that much of an education.".3  

Once Shuler became older, he soon found out that there were fringe benefits to being a musician.  He recalls one particular gig in Creole. 

Boy, there were some pretty little gals. I'm telling you, them were good looking little gals, and I hadn't never even seen a Cajun until I come over here. All them little Cajun gals was ganged around me like flies around flypaper. So the second time we went out there to play, they carried my guitar for me and all my songs and everything. I said, 'To hell with that damn drag line! I'm going to be a musician.'"3    

J’ai passe devant ta porte,

J’ai crie, “By-bye la belle.”

Y a personne qu’a pas repondu,

O ye yaille, mon coeur fait mal.

Moi, je mis (à) bien observer,

Moi, je vu le lumiere allumé,

Y quelque chose qui me disait j'aurais pleuré,

O ye yaille, mon coeur fait mal.

Quand j’ai ete cogner a la porte,

Quand ont (r)ouvert la porte de la maison,

Moi, j’ai vu des chandelles allumees

Tout autour de ton cercueil.

Eddie Shuler's Reveliers
KPLC in Lake Charles
Eddie Shuler, unknown, possibly Eldrige "Coon" Guidry, 
Amos Comeaux, Johnny Babb, Jimmy Webster, unknown
Courtesy of Chris Strachwitz

So, Eddie joined up with the Hackberry Ramblers in the 1940s, but it was short lived.  Shuler wanted to record his own songs and focus more on hillbilly music, like his main influence, Bob Wills. He left the Ramblers and started his own outfit: Eddie Shuler and the All Star Reveliers.3     Shuler recalls:

Then I decided I wanted to make records, so I found an ad in Billboard magazine, a place in New York.  So I saved my money, and with this outfit in New York, I made my first record on Goldband.  Why Goldband?  I was one of those true optimists, I believed, and I had to find me a name.  I sad "Goldband!"  I could visualize a gold band, a gold mine.  Then I had to come up with the logo.  I had an artist to draw the logo for me, which we sent to the guy in New York.1

Recorded in either late 1954 or early 1955, Shuler's orchestra consisted of twin fiddles, possibly by Charlie Broussard and Norris Savoie, and together they recorded the original Cleoma Breaux classic song entitled "J'ai Passe Devant Ta Porte" (#700).  The vocals seem to point to Frankie Mailhes as lead singer but it remains unknown.   It was pressed on both his black and blue labels. 

I passed in front of your door

I cried, "Goodbye, my beautiful girl."

Yet no one responded.

Oh, how my heart aches!

I took a closer look,

I saw the lights lit,

And something told me I was going to cry,

Oh, how my heart aches!

When I knocked at the door,

When they they opened the door of the house,

I saw the (devotional) candles lit,

All around your coffin.

Strangely enough, his subtitled the song "The For Me, For Me Song" for reasons unknown on the blue label.  Yet, he misspells the title as "Je Vous Passe La Porte" on the black label, only referencing the band as "Shuler's All Star Reveliers".  Although this was probably recorded much earlier, the pressing of this song was a late one for the Reveliers.  Later, in an interview, he mistakenly believes this was pressed on Bob Tanner's TNT label but clearly done under the management of his contemporary down the street, George Khoury.  When asked about Khoury,

Oh yeah, none of the people that's here are competition to me.  We're friends.2   

1. Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers By John Broven
2. https://arhoolie.org/eddie-shuler-goldband-records/
3. http://theind.com/article-168-the-record-man.html

Release Info:
J’ai Passé Devant Ta Porte | Khoury's 700-A
Louisiana Stomp | Khoury's 700-B

Find:
Eddie Shuler & His All Star Reveliers: Grande Mamou (BACM, 2016)

Hillbilly Researcher # 27 - Khoury`s & Lyric (Hillbilly Researcher, 2018)