Ernest & Donald Thibodeaux - Robert Special (Lanor 1000), 1982
I found this record in New Orleans in 2023 and got me some real fine, original cajun music. Ernest Thibodeaux performed with one of cajun music's stars, Nathan Abshire, and had a career in music on his own for more than half a century.
Ernest Joseph Thibodeaux was born on October 9, 1925, in the small community of Mermantau near Jennings, Louisiana. Music was a part of his life early on, as his father Clobule played cajun music, too. Thibodeaux started playing at the age of 10 years and taught himself to play guitar, fiddle, bass, and drums. At the age of 13, he met fiddler Will Kegley and the Lake Charles Playboys and began performing with them.
Following World War II, Kegley and Thibodeaux regularly played the local Pine Grove Club dance hall in Evangeline. In 1948, Kegley's sister Oziet joined on drums, making it a trio. Dance hall owner Telasfore Esthay suggested including an accordion. Thibodeaux found an accordionist in Nathan Abshire, who joined as well. The Pine Grove Boys were born. The next year, Jim Baker and Atlis Frujia on steel guitar made the band complete. Thanks to the owner of the Avalon Club, Quincy Davis, the band was signed to a recording contract with George Khoury and Virgil Bozeman and their various labels that same year. However, in May 1949 Abshire and Thibodeaux held a session at a Lake Charles radio station backed by Earl DeMary's band. This session produced the first version of "Pine Grove Blues", which became a regional hit.
Thibodeaux recorded with Abshire and various line-ups until 1955. Credited not only to the Pine Grove Boys but to various band names, the results were released on Khoury and Bozeman's various labels: Oklahoma Tornado (OT), Lyric, Khoury's, and Bob Tanner's Hot Rod label. Many of those discs were good sellers regionally but the band did not saw much money from it. Thibodeaux remained with the Pine Grove Boys until the late 1950s, then left the group but continued performing locally.
He regularly played Fred's Lounge in Mamou in the decades to come. Today's selection came into existence not until 1982, recorded for the Jennings based Lanor label's custom series. It featured Ernest Thibodeaux plus Donald Thibodeaux on accordion and Robert Thibodeaux on vocals. As far as I can tell, all three men were not (or not directly) related. Both "Robert Special" and "Hilda's Waltz" are fine examples of traditional cajun music. Ernest and Donald Thibodeaux, the latter also played at Fred's Lounge, eventually recorded the album "Fred's Hot Step" for Arhoolie with Ernest on drums.
In 1996, Ernest Thibodeaux was inducted in Fred's Lounge Wall of Fame and became a member of the French Cajun Music Association Hall of Fame in 1999. He passed away on August 18, 2006, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at the age of 80 years.
Recommended reading
Sources
Ernest Thibodeaux
• Discogs
Donald Thibodeaux
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