BeauSoleil - Biography
BeauSoleil is the most popular Cajun band to ever come out of Louisiana, and they remain the only such group to ever win a Grammy (after six nominations). But while their album L’Amour Ou La Folie (1997 Rhino) took home a gold statue for Best Traditional Folk Album, their approach is anything but traditional, even though their brand of music never strays too far from the music’s roots. BeauSoleil are a hard rockin’ band, but they only play acoustic instruments while dropping blues, jazz, R&B, New Orleans second-line strut, folk, Tex-Mex, Texas swing, Zydeco, and world music into their sound. The group started playing in an effort to preserve the traditional sounds of Cajun fiddle music, but along the way created a fresh wave of interest in Cajun music. They are credited with spawning a new generation of bands that have not only kept the old music alive, but made it into a constantly-evolving genre that attracts listeners from all over the globe. BeauSoleil’s appearance at Super Bowl XXXI in 1997 signaled their arrival on the international stage.
The best Cajun band in the world grew out of Michael Doucet’s fascination with a Cajun television show, Passe Partout. He was born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1951, and his family was musical. While still a boy, a fiddling uncle taught Doucet how to play. In the ’60s he began performing in rock bands, but when Doucet heard Fairport Convention’s “Cajun Woman” he grew fascinated with Acadian culture—the songs and stories of the descendants of the French-speaking people the British expelled from Canada and shipped en masse to Louisiana in 1755. He became an amateur folklorist and visited with the older generation of musicians who had shaped Cajun music. He collected their songs, playing techniques and stories, and learned from greats like Dewey Balfa, Canray Fontenot, Amédé Ardoin and accordion player, Don Montoucet.
A year abroad in England and France for college introduced him to the European roots of Cajun music in 1973. Doucet studied with Scottish fiddler Barry Dransfield, who in turn introduced him to Richard Thompson, before heading off to France where he heard French folk songs that were still being played by the older generation back home. Back in Louisiana, Doucet joined swamp pop group Coteau—a band known as the Cajun Grateful Dead for its blend of rock, Cajun and jazzy improvisation. An invitation to a folk festival in France led to a year-long sojourn there with the band. Doucet used the time between shows to track down more traditional tunes. This time when he got back to the States, he got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and began collecting traditional music in southern Louisiana as a real folklorist.
In 1975, Doucet put together the first version of BeauSoleil. (The band’s name honors Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, the leader of the Acadian resistance to the British Expulsion.) The band’s mix of blues, jazz, R&B, New Orleans second line strut, folk, Tex-Mex, Texas swing, Zydeco, and world music was already in place on early albums like The Spirit of Cajun Music (1977 Swallow), Parlez-Nous a Boire (1984 Arhoolie) and Allons a Lafayette (1986 Arhoolie) made with legendary fiddler Canray Fontenot. They made some progress into the mainstream with the soundtrack music Doucet composed for the film, Belizaire the Cajun (1986 Arhoolie), which revived interest in Cajun music. Their first Rounder albums, Bayou Boogie (1987 Rounder) and Bayou Cadillac (1989 Rounder) finally put them on the national map. In 1988, Doucet took home a Clifton Chenier Award as the finest musician in French-speaking Louisiana.
The Rounder albums got them onto the folk and jazz festival circuit and BeauSoleil became regulars on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion. Mary Chapin Carpenter used them as her band on Down at the Twist and Shout (1992 Columbia), and took them with her for her appearance at Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. The band became an international touring juggernaut in the ’90s, and produced albums like Live from the Left Coast (1989 Rounder); Cajun Conja (1991 Rhino), with Richard Thompson adding his tasty guitar to several tracks; La Danse de La Vie (1993 Forward); Cajun & Creole Music (1994 Music of the World); Vintage Beausoleil (1995 Music of the World), which featured new treatments of standards written by Cajun fiddlers in the ’20s and ’30s; and then the Grammy-winning, L’ Amour Ou la Folie (1997 Rhino).
By 2001, BeauSoleil had been on the road for 25 years, and the hits kept coming. Best of the Crawfish Years 1985-1991 (2001 Rounder) gave fans rare live and studio recordings; Looking Back Tomorrow: BeauSoleil Live (2001 Rhino) was another Greatest Hits live performance; Gitane Cajun (2004 Vanguard) dropped a bit of western swing, Latin and funk into their deep Cajun/Zydeco roots; while Alligator Purse (2009 Yep Roc) shows how hard acoustic music can rock, featuring stellar turns from friends and relations like Garth Hudson, Artie and Happy Traum, Andy Stein of Commander Cody and Asleep at the Wheel, John Sebastian and Natalie Merchant.
Solid overviews of the band’s oeuvre include The Best of BeauSoleil (1997 Arhoolie); Cajunization (1999 Rhino); BeauSoleil: Their Swallow Years (2003 Ace UK); and Encore, Encore!! The Best of BeauSoleil 1991 - 2001 (2003 Rhino).
Michael Doucet also plays and sings with The Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, as well as Fiddlers 4.