Every memory in the archive
Browse the full archive of Zydeco music and Louisiana & Texas Creole culture, filtered by category.
Archie Bell, lead singer of Archie Bell & the Drells from Houston, Texas, was born on September 1, 1944 in Henderson, Texas. Archie Bell grew up in Houston, Texas in a household that included seven br...
Joseph Melvin Walker was born on Thursday, December 14, 1944 in Lafayette, Louisiana. An accomplished accordionist, guitarist and keyboardist with a powerful and unique gospel influenced voice, Joe Wa...
Joseph Adam Mouton, known to the Zydeco Nation as Zydeco Joe was born on October 25, 1943 in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was "raised up in Carencro" (as he sang in many of his songs), living on a farm gr...
Soul singer Louis "Big Lou" Washington Sr was born on Monday, August 4, 1941 in Opelousas, Louisiana. He was the fourth child of Nathan Washington and Stella Moore-Washington. "Big Lou" Washington beg...
Guitarist/singer Roscoe Chenier was born November 6, 1941 in the rural community of Notleyville, just east of Opelousas, Louisiana. The son of Arthur and Philomen Chenier, he is a cousin of the late,...
Fernest Arceneaux, lead accordionist for Fernest and the Thunders, was born on August 27, 1940 to a large sharecropping family based in Lafayette, Louisiana. He learned to play an accordion owned by h...
Albert “Little Smokey” Smothers was born on January 2, 1939, in Tchula, Mississippi, and began playing guitar at 15. Two years later, Smothers moved to Chicago and shortly after landed gigs with Arthu...
James Carroll Booker III, known as the Piano Prince, was an extremely talented jazz, New Orleans rhythm and blues and soul musician, was born on December 17, 1939 in New Orleans, Louisiana. While stil...
Southern Soul and Blues singer, Tyrone Davis, was born on May 4, 1938 to Willie Branch and Ora Lee Jones in a rural community twenty miles outside of Greenville, Mississippi. Working as a valet/chaffe...
Henry Lee Williams, known to the Southern Soul and Blues Nation as Lee "Shot" Williams was born on May 21, 1938 in the small country town of Lexington, Mississippi.He grew up singing in local gospel g...
Leo "The Bull" Thomas was born on January 8, 1937 to Hubert “Ebear” Thomas and Orelia Bushnell Thomas in Basile, Louisiana. Known in the Zydeco Nation as "The Bull" and the "Best Dress Man In Zydeco,"...
Harry 'Big Daddy' Hypolite, talented guitarist and sideman for more than 40 years, most notably in the bands of the Zydeco great Clifton Chenier, later Chenier's son C.J. Chenier and Nathan & the Zyde...