Tufty Indigo đŸȘ—Feb 11
The thumbnail photo on this Clifton Chenier album https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k-5Yqg8H9Ul9-Eo-DSvErnsaoxf-mzvkI shows him singing into a #microphone that's mounted directly on his #accordion. When I've tried this I've picked up awful amounts of handling noise from pressing keys and registers, but this photo gives me confidence that there's a way to make it work out. How? Other than just a high-pass on the channel.
King of Louisiana Blues and Zydeco - Album by Clifton Chenier

Listen to King of Louisiana Blues and Zydeco by Clifton Chenier on YouTube Music - a dedicated music app with official songs, music videos, remixes, covers, and more.

YouTube Music
Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 14

@tuftyindigo
Clifton was known for not following sound musical advice or practice

Including Chris Strachwitz’s repeatedly recommending that he not place his #accordion mics in front of the amplifiers, where they caused plenty of feedback

According to Chris, Chenier didn’t want to do that so the “squealing” continued đŸ€·đŸ»â€â™‚ïž

This wasn’t a cool Jimi Hendrix feedback. It was the other kind nobody but noise musicians like

Show threadAccordionBruce

@tuftyindigo
I think Chenier probably had piezoelectric mic internally mounted inside his #accordion at times

That was kind of top-of-the-line Accordion amplification for a long time

Accordion ended up about 40 years behind the guitar in amplification by the 1970s. And has never caught up

You can most clearly hear the technology in the recording at Berkeley from 1966 because he’s performing just with his brother on rubboard and a drummer
https://youtu.be/I11Pvvjpa4o
#zydeco

Clifton Chenier - Live at the 1966 Berkeley Blues Festival

YouTube
Feb 14 at 7:28pmToot!
Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 14

@tuftyindigo
That’s a very important recording because it’s Chenier’s first performance in front of a white kind of college folk/blues revival audience

If you listen to it, imagine if somebody had played #zydeco #blues #accordion like that (as Clifton had been doing since the 1950s) on national TV like Ed Sullivan with The Beatles

Millions of kids taking accordion lessons at the time might have made the world a different place

Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 14

@tuftyindigo
My friend Jared Snyder researched the lost English-speaking African American square-dance #accordion tradition that Lead Belly sprang from (it was LB’s first instrument)

Chenier’s Berkeley recording is Jared’s favourite because you can hear his left hand playing those blues base lines

Pretty much all his later recordings he got a band with bass guitar together

On that one it’s just Clifton, his brother Cleveland on rubboard and a drummer

#Zydeco’s #blues mix from the source

Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 14

@tuftyindigo
I keep telling Jared to write a book with his research on the Black #accordion

He’s looked for a publisher with no luck đŸ˜€

The “African Americans Played Accordions Before they Played the Blues” chapter in my #AccordionRevolution book is basically stolen from his work

Having read more history of #blues antecedents before the guitar I’d add more footnotes to that clever chapter title than it already has, but there it is 🙄

Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 14

@tuftyindigo
Also, that “My favourite recording of Clifton Chenier’s is the one from Berkeley in 1966” story may have been from Michael Tisserand

He wrote the great Kingdom of Zydeco, still one of the best books about the music
https://www.michaeltisserand.com/kingdom-of-zydeco
#zydeco

Kingdom of Zydeco — Michael Tisserand

Michael Tisserand
Show threadTufty Indigo đŸȘ—Feb 24
@AccordionBruce Only just got to listening, and I see what you mean. The accordion is so forward in the mix, while the drums and washboard could be in the next room. It's a lot closer to today's close-miced recordings; back then it was more usual to mic farther from the instrument and get a lot more bleed and room tone.
Show threadAccordionBruceFeb 27

@tuftyindigo
Later in his career he wanted to fill halls and get R&B’d up like Ray Charles so had to have the full band

And once you have an electric bass guitar you don’t need the left hand of an accordion

So the sound of zydeco was changing