Legendary Zydeco musician Clifton Chenier to be honored in his home parish

Legendary Zydeco musician Clifton Chenier to be honored in his home parish

Clifton Chenier Centennial to take place on June 25, 2025

June 3, 2021

by Bobby Ardoin 

Daily World 

Clifton Chenier performs at Jay's Lounge& Cockpit in Cankton, Louisiana in 1974.  The St Landry Parish Council signed a four-year resolution declaring June 25 as Clifton Chenier Day, a celebration that  according to the resolution will continue of the same day through 2025, the centennial year of Chenier's birth. USA Today Network File

Legendary musician and Opelousas-area native Clifton Chenier who helped develop the zydeco blend of French music and rock 'n' roll into a genre recognized worldwide, will have his contributions recognized for the next four years in St. Landry Parish where he first developed his musical skills.

The St. Landry Parish Council on Wednesday night signed a four-year resolution declaring June 25 as Clifton Chenier Day, a celebration that according to the resolution will continue on the same day through 2025, the centennial year of Chenier’s birth. 

St. Landry Parish tourism director Herman Fuselier and Opelousas Tourism Director Melanie Lebouef told council members that Chenier, the son of a sharecropper who was born between Opelousas and Port Barre, is the most decorated musician to emerge from St. Landry.

Fuselier said a committee is being formed to determine different ways to celebrate Chenier’s lifelong commitment to the creation of zydeco, which is now played worldwide by musicians primarily from South Louisiana.

“Zydeco is a unique music and the committee will be meeting to determine ways to exhibit (Chenier’s) contributions. (Chenier) has been labeled as the King of Zydeco and he was quite a force in doing that.

“He has received a Grammy Award (in 1983) and in 2014 (Chenier) received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, making him the most decorated musician to ever come out of St. Landry Parish,” Fuselier told a Finance and Administrative Committee.

Craig Harris, who has written a short biography of Chenier’s life for the website “ALL Music,” indicates that Chenier probably learned to play the accordion by listening to his father, Joe Chenier perform on the musical instrument and later teamed with his brother Cleveland Chenier to form the Red Hot Louisiana Band in 1976.

The parish council resolution states that Chenier who often performed wearing a crown and garish cape for theatrical effect, was a “significant force,” that popularized zydeco, described as an infusion of R&B rhythm and swing backed by chromatic piano and accordion.

Clifton Chenier and his band in Blackham Coliseum in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1974 at the debut concert event that would grow into Festivals Acadiens et Creoles. Courtesy of Neil Burgard

Clifton Chenier's legendary career

During his career, Chenier signed several recording contracts beginning with Elko Records in Lake Charles, which featured his regional hit singles, “Cliston’s Blues,” and "Louisiana Stomp" along with the Specialty Records production of “Hey Little Girl,” which covered a Professor Longhair song, the resolution said.

The development of the Red Hot Louisiana Band featured saxophonist John Hart, guitarists Paul “Lil’ Buck” Senegal and Joe Brouchet along with drummer Robert St. Julien and Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, who later started the Grammy and Emmy-award winning Buckwheat Zydeco Band, said the resolution.

Chenier won a first Grammy in 1983 for his album “I’m Here,” and the next year he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

Later Chenier performed at the White House and in 2011 Chenier and band members were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for the 1975 album Bogalusa Boogie. During the same year Chenier became a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

Chenier’s son, C.J. Chenier, also developed into a zydeco musician with his own band.

The Harris biography notes that during the 1940s, Chenier often played the Lake Charles dance hall circuit, while working and cutting in the sugar cane fields around New Iberia.

Chenier moved some years later to Port Arthur, Texas, playing music, while driving trucks and hauling pipe for the Gulf and Texaco oil corporations, the biography states.

During the final years of his life, Chenier was placed on kidney dialysis. He died in 1987 in Lafayette and is buried in Loreauville.

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