"O.S.T. Gal" - Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc

Like Western swing, Cajun swing helped redefine the rural Southern experience, an experience based on interaction and exchange. Varied cultural currents flowed freely throughout the Bayou Country. Individuals only had to reach out to access the cultural innovations and mass culture available at their fingertips.1 Happy Fats and his swinging fiddler, Harry Choates, were keenly aware of the music's popularity and had no problem performing throughout south Louisiana and Texas. The duo recorded an upbeat tune in 1940 entitled "O.S.T. Gal" (#8537) for Bluebird records.  His group had Sandy Lormand on guitar, Joseph "Pee Wee" Broussard on banjo, Ray Clark on steel guitar, and Harold "Popeye" Broussard on piano.  Harry's fiddle rides, Sandy's electric guitar slides and Popeye's honky-tonk piano sound really made this recording shine. Based on an old 19th century tune known as "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers", a blackface minstrel spiritual made famous by the Fisk Jubilee Singers and later by Vernon Dalhart & Carson Robison, it was used in other recordings such as the Jolly Boys of Lafayette's "Old Man Crip".  

1924 Travel Log

Met me a girl at the O.S.T.,

Thought sure was a hum-dinger,

I soon asked her to put a ring,

Upon her little finger.

Chaste and pure, she assured be true,

She'd would wed me soon,

We'd go down to my old town,

And spend our honeymoon.

Bought me a ring and bought me a cow,

And I bought me a Model T Ford,

Saved nineteen dollars and twenty cents,

Just to pay our board.

Barely clothed, up bright and early,

My gal, I went home to bring (her),

She stepped up with a dozen children,

Hanging on her apron string.

Says "Hello daddy, we're glad to see you,

Mama sure is due,

We can't see how she ever fell,

For a guy with a mug like you."

Puttin my Ford in reverse,

Sure was nothing could stop her,

Now I know I'll never be,

That dozen children's papa.

Says "Hello daddy, we're glad to see you,

Mama sure is due,

We can't see how she ever fell,

For a guy with a mug like you."

Puttin my Ford in reverse,

Sure was nothing could stop her,

Now I know I'll never be,

That dozen children's papa.

Rayne Acadian Tribune
Mar 1, 1940

O.S.T. is references the O.S.T. Dancehall located in Rayne, LA.   Many Cajun bands played there with many Cajun "gals" arriving to enjoy a good time.  The name O.S.T. is shortened for the Old Spanish Trail, named so after a colonial Spanish highway that connected San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL.  The old route, now mostly made of HWY 90, passed through New Orleans, Lafayette, Crowley, and Rayne.  Happy recalled: 

The club I played longest at was the old O.S.T. club here in Rayne.3  

Harold Broussard remembered traveling on the way to record with Happy Fats and Harry Choates.  When the band was offered a recording contract with RCA (Bluebird), they loaded up Happy Fats' 1934 Chevrolet with instruments. The stand-up bass was strapped to the car's roof.  The Rayne-Bo Ramblers triumphantly rolled into Dallas and performed a very successful recording session in the studios of the Jefferson Hotel.  On the return trip, a gust of wind blew the bass fiddle from the roof of Happy Fats' Chevrolet sending the instrument crashing into a dozen pieces to the highway between Dallas and Shreveport. Everyone bailed out of the car including Harry and retrieved the scattered pieces from the roadway. The instrument was returned to Rayne and miraculously repaired.  According to Broussard, the sounds it produced were better than ever.  "We must have had angels on our shoulders."2  

O.S.T. Nite Club
Courtesy Lisa Smith Soileaux and Tony Olinger

By the late 1930s, RCA Victor and it's subsidiary label, Bluebird, were exhausted with the releases of Cajun-French songs and Happy used the opportunity to push more of his English speaking music to the masses.  It wouldn't be until over a year and a half before he would re-enter the Bluebird studios in Dallas, TX in October 1941.  In his last session in Dallas, he recorded 8 songs, half of them American hillbilly tunes and half of them Cajun French tunes.   However, by the time they were ready for release, Bluebird dumped all but one of the Cajun recordings in favor of the English ones. 

1929 Travel Log

It didn't matter too much since not long after the 1941 recording session, the US entered WWII and Cajun music ceased to be recorded by any label for the next 4 years.

1. Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an American-Made Music By Ryan Andre Brasseaux
2. "Poor Hobo: The Tragic Life of Harry Choates: A Cajun Legend" by Tim Knight
3. South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous By John Broven
4. Lyrics by Jordy A

Find:
Harry Choates: Five-Time Loser 1940-1951 (Krazy Kat, 1990)

Cajun Fiddle King (AIM, 1999)
Devil In The Bayou - The Gold Star Recordings (Bear Family, 2002)

"Les Tete Fille De Lafayette" - Happy Fats

Cajun country musician, Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc took chances with musicians filling in his group and Harry Choates was definitely one of them.   In 1940, Harry began playing with Leo Soileau and Happy in their Cajun band. He started playing with a borrowed fiddle. For the rest of his career he played with borrowed instruments and may never have actually owned his own. If he did, he would have bought it from a pawn shop and then later sold it to buy something to drink. Choates could play anything with strings, and occasionally, the piano. Once, when the strings on his bow were broken, he cut them off in a ceiling fan, rosined the wood of the bow and played the fiddle with that.4,5   

By February of 1940, Harry joined Happy in Dallas, Texas for his earliest recording session for Bluebird records.  In their ode to the 'belles' of Lafayette, the Rayne-Bo Ramblers expanded on the arranging style employed during their recording of "Lafayette" by emphasizing vocal harmonies, dramatic pauses, and fiddle and steel guitar breaks.1  According to author Ryan Brasseaux:

The Rayne-Bo Rambler release "Les Tit Fille de Lafayette" represents a high point during the Cajun swing era.  Happy Fats Leblanc and his string band combined French lyrics with Southern gospel harmonies and jazzy fiddle breaks.  The arrangement was sophisticated, urbane, and absolutely cosmopolitan, just like the musicians and culture from which the music sprang.1 

Rayne Tribune
Aug 23, 1940

Allons là-bas à Lafayette,

C’est pour voir les belles petites filles,

On va danser, on va traîner,

On va avoir les meilleurs temps de nos vies.

Tu connais, moi, je connais,

C’est la place pour moi à aller,

Hé, petite fille, après espérer,

Loin, là-bas, dans Lafayette.

The song "La Tete Fille Lafayette" (#2083) was led by two vocalists: Kaplan native and guitarist Stafford "Sandy" Lormand and Texas swing fiddle player Harry Choates. The rhythm section's bouncing 2/4 backbeat with Happy on bass, Harold Broussard on piano, Choates' cascading fiddle runs, and Ray Clark's bright steel guitar accents painted a jovial musical backdrop for the romantic lyrics to "Les Tit Fille De Lafayette," which describe a bachelor's paradise at a Lafayette dance.1  According to music author Michael Hurtt, 

"Les Tit Fille De Lafayette" was a song so swinging that when he bursts into the French vocal it’s a shock to the listener that it isn’t sung in English.3

Let's go over there to Lafayette,

It's to see the beautiful little girls,

We're going to dance, we're going to hang out,

We're going to have the best times of our lives.

You know, I know,

It's the place for me to go,

Hey, little girl, I hope,

Far away, over there, in Lafayette.

Daily Advertiser
Jun 12, 1940

More than anything else, Harry’s gig with the Ramblers combined all of the rural, bluesy overtones, advanced jazzy improvisations and sprightly musicianship that would come to define his unique style.3  

But Harry's stint with Happy didn't last.   His heavy drinking and unreliability was too much for Happy's style and Harry left after three months with the group.  During this time, the Ramblers would be featured on KVOL.  It was Lafayette's oldest radio station, opening in 1935 and featured Happy Fats on their program.   For a short while, a fiddler from Port Arthur, TX, named Billie Mack "Tiny" Moore, joined the group for a short stint.   Moore recalls playing during the KVOL years:

Then I went to Louisiana with a Cajun band by the name of "Happy Fats and His Rainbow Ramblers". We lived in Rayne, Louisiana and our radio program was in Lafayette, Louisiana on KVOL, I'll never forget it. I was over there for about a year. A steady job. A very low-paying job, but it didn't cost much to live. For instance, my room and board and laundry, I lived with his mother, Happy Fats' mother, Leroy LeBlanc was his real name. I lived with Mrs. LeBlanc, marvelous French cook, for two dollars a week. My room and board and laundry was two dollars a week. So if we made 15-20 dollars a week, we were still all right. I enjoyed that. We did play a lot of the old Cajun music which I wasn't too familiar with, and am still not even today. But with a swing feel I suppose. And a lot of the country songs back in those days.2 

Moore would later leave for Port Arthur joining the Jubileers swing band.

St. Joseph High School Gym, Rayne, LA, Jan 28, 1941
KVOL Hillbilly Jamboree
Billie Mack "Tiny" Moore, radio manager Robert Escudier,
radio host Alfred Bryant "A.B." Craft Jr,
Joseph "Pee Wee" Broussard, radio host Dick Haynes,
Ray "Professor" Clark, Stafford "Sandy" Lormand,
Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc

1. Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an American-Made Music By Ryan Andre Brasseaux
2. Eldon Shamblin, Tiny Moore, Dean McKinney Moore 1981 interview online
3. http://www.offbeat.com/articles/harry-choates/
4. http://therecordlive.com/2015/06/23/harry-choates-godfather-of-cajun-music/
5. "Poor Hobo: The Tragic Life of Harry Choates: A Cajun Legend" by Tim Knight
6. Lyrics by Jordy A and Eric C

Release Info:
BS-048014-1 Les Tete Fille De Lafayette B-2083-A Bluebird
BS-048012-1 La Polka A Gilbert (Old Time Polka) B-2083-B Bluebird

Find:

Harry Choates: Five-Time Loser 1940-1951 (Krazy Kat, 1990)

Devil In The Bayou - The Gold Star Recordings (Bear Family, 2002)

Cajun Capers: Cajun Music 1928-1954 (Proper, 2005)

"The Old Ice Man" - Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc

One of Harry Choates's more colorful musician companions was Harold "Popeye" Broussard.  Broussard by all accounts was an excellent piano man and singer.  His specialty was his rendition of the dance hall favorite "How Would You Like To Be The Old Ice Man".  Harry's fiddle and Broussard's piano complimented each other at times.  Other times, Harry and Popeye at times appeared to be in competition with each other to see who could raise the most hell.1 

Together, along with Happy Fats' Rayne-Bo Ramblers band, recorded the tune as "The Old Ice Man" (#8537) in Dallas, Texas in 1940.  They drew crowds and complimented any band they performed with.1 With Harry on fiddle and Popeye on vocals, their group consisted of Sandy Lormand on guitar, Pee Wee Broussard on banjo, Ray Clark on steel, and Happy Fats on bass.

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

Sell the coldest stuff in town,

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

I mean to turn you down,

Since bacon went up to a dollar a pound,

I ate so many rabbits I've been jumping around,

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

Sell the coldest stuff in town.

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

Sell the coldest stuff in town,

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

I mean to turn you down,

Now, I'm sitting in the parlor, mingling around,

I wasn't too dumb to hear the back door slam,

How'd you like to be that old ice man,

Sell the coldest stuff in town.

Eventually Harry went on his way, leaving Broussard to his own devices in the Lake Charles musical scene.   Without Harry, Broussard left and started a family.  According to author Tim Knight:

They were companions in deliquent behavior. If one was hired, both had to be hired; they were a matched set.1    

1. Poor Hobo: The Tragic Life of Harry Choates, a Cajun Legend by Tim Knight
2. Lyrics by Jerry M

Find:
Harry Choates: Five-Time Loser 1940-1951 (Krazy Kat, 1990)
Cajun Fiddle King (AIM, 1999)
Devil In The Bayou - The Gold Star Recordings (Bear Family, 2002)
The Best Of Cajun & Zydeco (Not Now, 2010)

"Gran Prairie" - Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc

The lively character and musician, Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc. It's one of the Happy's more well known tunes, converting a popular melody into a country string band song.  Happy and fiddler Harry Choates had a short and tumultuous stint in 1940 when their group recorded a slew of songs for Bluebird records.  However, like many bands that worked with Harry, it didn't last.  His drinking and loose lifestyle was too erratic for Happy's style.  While together briefly, they headed to the Jefferson Hotel in Dallas, Texas to record "Gran Prairie" (#2081).  Grand Prairie is a rural region of St. Landry Parish between Opelousas and Ville Platte.  Here, the song which would eventually become Hank William's "Jambalaya" became an ode to this region.

Moi j'm'en va chère p'tite fille pour toujours,

Ouais là-bas z'à Grand Prairie malheureux,

Rappelle-toi malheureuse ma p'tite fille,

Tous les misères qu'tu m'as fait, jolie coeur.

Moi j'm'en va chère p'tite fille pour toujours,

Ouais là-bas z' à Grand Prairie malheureux,

Ouais là-bas malheureuse au bout du monde,

Moi j'm'en va z'à Grand Prairie,

C'est mon pays.

Eric Arceneaux, Louis Arceneaux, Happy Fats
1936 Blue Goose Dancehall2

The first recording of this melody as a Cajun tune was by the Guidry Brothers called "Le Garcon Negligent" in 1929.   As a direct influence from the Jolly Boy's "Abbeville", the tune foreshadows Papa Cairo's use of the tune in his recording of "Grand Texas", or "Big Texas", in years to come.   It would be no surprise that Happy heard the melody since he had previously worked with Red Fabaucher of the Jolly Boys and Papa Cairo of the Louisiana Rounders.  Both had used the melody in their tunes, including Papa Cairo's "Alons Kooche Kooche" several years earlier.  The song contains a quick fiddle ride by a relatively unknown fiddle player at the time known as Harry Choates.  The rest of the band contained Sandy Lormand on guitar, Joseph M. "Pee Wee" Broussard on banjo, Ray Clark on steel guitar and Harold Broussard on piano.  

I, myself, will go, dear little girl, forever,

Yes, over there to Grand Prairie, oh my,

Remember how unhappy you were, my little girl,

All the misery which you made for me, pretty heart.

I, myself, will go, dear little girl, forever,

Yes, over there to Grand Praire, oh my,

Yes, over there, oh my, to the end of the world,

I, myself, will go to Grand Prairie,

It's my countryside.

Sandy would go on to play with Happy for several years including Doc Guidry's Sons of the South band.  Pee Wee Broussard would tour with Harry Choates and in an interview with Kevin Coffey, stated:

[Harry] never looked for what could happen tomorrow.  He lived for today.1

1. Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost By Tony Russell
2. Rayne's People and Places By Tony Olinger

Find:
Harry Choates: Five-Time Loser 1940-1951 (Krazy Kat, 1990)
Gran Prairie: Cajun Music Anthology, Vol. 3: The Historic Victor Bluebird Sessions (Country Music, 1994)
Cajun Fiddle King (AIM, 1999)
Devil In The Bayou - The Gold Star Recordings (Bear Family, 2002)
Cajun Country, Vol. 2, More Hits from the Swamp (JSP, 2005)
Cajun Capers: Cajun Music 1928-1954 (Proper, 2005)
The Beginner's Guide to Cajun Music (Proper/Primo, 2008)

"La Veuve De La Coulee" - Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc

In 1940, Harry Choates made his first recordings, playing fiddle and electric guitar with Happy Fats' Rayne-Bo Ramblers.  Formerly a purely Cajun band, the Ramblers were by then playing western swing-influenced honkytonk music, the songs in English as often as French.  Choates too would make his living in both camps, switching effortlessly from old Cajun tunes to swing numbers.3 

Like the Hackberry Ramblers' "Wondering", "La Veuve De La Coulee" (#2081), known as "The Widows of the Creek", struck a chord with the record buying audiences when it was.  Released on Bluebird in 1942, the record  became a national hit.1  The remaining members were Sandy Lormand on guitar, Pee Wee Broussard on banjo, and Ray Clark on steel.   Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc recalls when the song was released:

Our picture came out along with people like the Sons of the Pioneers. We had the "Hit of the Week", which was a number we recorded called "Les Veuve A Kita La Coulee" that I had cut in Dallas for RCA.1,2  

Harry Choates

Tout les veuve de la coulée, 

Sont partie au village,

Pour acheter de coton jaune a la boutique.

Pour achter des coton jaune,

Pour fait des tite mémines,

Pour les belle tit coeur de coulée Kinney.

Tout les veuve de la coulée, 

Sont partie au village,

Pour acheter de coton jaune a la boutique.

Sont aller sur la coulée, 

Sont aller sur la coulée, 

Pour amener les belle tite fille la bas chez Joe. 

Crowley Daily Signal
Sept 12, 1941

It was an old melody that can be traced back to 19th century with the first instance known as "Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine".   By 1856, it would be formally written into the song "Darling Nellie Gray" and recorded by John Myers in 1904.  Years later, the tune would be popularized throughout Appalacia and Texas.  "La Veuve" became Happy's first significant hit.  The band increased the tempo and inserted lyrics of a French tale about widows and coton jaune.1   

Coton jaune is a hand-spun and hand woven Acadian brown cotton used by Cajun women in the countryside. According to Dr. Ray Brassieur and Suzanne Chaillot Breaux it's "New World cotton" originating from ancient trade routes from Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) up to Tunica Hills".  Breaux states:

"This cotton made its way over to south Louisiana and then it just took like crazy like cotton does in this area.  They were mostly doing wool up there in Nova Scotia, but when they arrived here they realized it was too hot, the climate wasn’t conducive for wool and they discovered this cotton growing here. Basically they realized that this cotton, not only was it free, but you didn’t need a cotton gin because they had discovered that the seed coat was seedless, plus hairless. So you would just pop the seeds right out and you had cotton that didn’t need a gin."5

As Happy resumed his music after the war, many of the tunes he remembered in the 40s were still popular on his radio program.  Given the chance to record again, he renamed "La Veuve" as "Les Veuve A Kita La Coulee" (#2035) --a misspelling of Les Veuves A Quitte La Coulee (The Widows Have Left The Gully)--for RCA Victor in 1946.  A follow-up recording translated as "the widows have left (quitter) the gully", his new group consisted of Francis "Red" Fabacher on lead guitar, Jimmy Gardiner on rhythm guitar, Giles "Candy Man" Castillo on steel, Buel Hoffpauir on drums, Andrus "Nonc Ambros" Thibodeaux on fiddle (not to be confused with the famous accordion player Ambrose Thibodeaux). 

In the song, he refers to Kinney Coulee, a small bayou in Vermilion parish near present-day Abbeville.   Happy's parents were from the area and for a short time, Happy lived along that bayou.6   

Coulee Kinney

All the widows of the gully,

Are leaving to the village,

To buy yellow cotton at the shop.

To buy yellow cotton,

For making little bloomers,

For the pretty little girls of the Kinney gully.

All the widows of the gully,

Are leaving to the village,

To buy yellow cotton at the shop.

Going down the gully, 

Going down the gully,

To bring the beautiful little girls down to Joe's.

That same year, he released the almost exact tune for J.D. Miller's Fais Do Do label called "Bayou Lafourche" (not to be confused by his recording of "Bayou Lafourche" on Bella done in 1953).  He changed the lyrics and slowed it down to a waltz. 

Alex Broussard, Nonc Ambrose, Happy Fats

Abe Manuel covered the tune in 1954, partly in French and partly in English, as "Country Girl".  Sidney Brown used the melody in his 1958 recording of "Noir Chaussette's Two Step".  In the later eras, "La Veuve" had many follow up recordings including one by Vin Bruce for Swallow records and in 1971, Austin Pitre recorded it giving it the title "Widow of the Gully" in which he "breaks" in the middle of the tune.   Later, the Balfa brothers would re-record the popular tune in 1975 in a live recording at the C.C. Lounge in Basile, Louisiana and then a week later in the studio at Rounder Records.   Quite possibly, it may have influenced Don Rich's recording of "Cajun Fiddle".

La Veuve De La Coulee (1942)

Les Veuve A Kita La Coulee (1946)

1. Cajun Breakdown : The Emergence of an American-Made Music By Ryan Andre Brasseaux
2. "South To Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous" by John Broven
3. Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost By Tony Russell 
4. http://www.bopping.org/happy-fats-leroy-leblanc-his-rayne-bo-ramblers-louisiana-extraordinaire-1935-1967/
5. http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/history/2015/05/11/big-deal-coton-jaune/27138863/
6. Discussions with Carolyn T S
7. Image by Neal P

Find:
Five-Time Loser 1940-1951 (Krazy Kat, 1998)
Cajun Fiddle King (AIM, 1999)
Devil in the Bayou - The Gold Star Recordings (Bear Family, 2002)
Cajun Classics: Kings Of Cajun At Their Very Best (Ace, 2002)
Cajun Capers: Cajun Music 1928-1954 (Proper, 2005)
Cajun Country, Vol. 2, More Hits from the Swamp (JSP, 2005)
HAPPY FATS & His Rayne-Bo Ramblers (BACM, 2009)
Leroy Happy Fats LeBlanc: & His Rayne-Bo Ramblers (Master Classics, 2013)