ROLLING STONES feat. STEVE RILEY “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés”
When I heard that a covers record was being made pairing "name" artists with local musicians in tribute of Clifton's centennial, my mind immediately jumped to The Stones doing a zydeco! Of course, the band's reverence for music of the American South is storied, but there were many specific clues to the band being hip to Clifton via lyrical name drops and Keith Richards having used Buckwheat Zydeco on his solo outing Talk Is Cheap. My dear Lafayette neighbor and band mate, Dickie Landry, had long told the story of taking Mick Jagger to hear Clifton one night at a mostly Creole attended Catholic high-school in Watts in L.A., in the late seventies.
Being a massive Stones fan myself and having gotten to know some of their camp through the years, I decided to swing for the fences and put in the ask. My even doing so truly speaks to just how dead-cool Clifton and his musical legacy are and how proud I am to be associated from having grown up immersed in that music here in Clifton's hometown of Lafayette (not to mention the fact that we share the same initials)!
I remember well first hearing his "Bon Ton Rouler" record on Arhoolie Records… The one with the brown cover. My aunt and uncle out in the countryside would wear that record out on Saturday afternoons. The older folks would pull back the living room rug for an impromptu house dance and starting to get primed for the night ahead of going out honky-tonkin'. I distinctly remember songs like "Frog Legs" and the lazy syncopated rhythm guitar chinks that propelled the title track "Bon Ton Rouler." That record made a huge and soulful impression on me as a young pre-teen who was just getting into playing guitar at the dawn of the eighties.
Later, I would come to know and make my mentor the great guitarist from Clifton’s Red Hot Louisiana Band, Paul "Lil Buck" Sinegal. Through "Buckaroo" (as he was known to his friends) I gained access to a whole “zydeco kingdom" and getting to know and play with many members of Clifton's band and touring the world with Buckwheat. I remember the day that my little junior high band was rehearsing in a friend's parent's garage when we heard the sound of a live band wafting over from a nearby park. We jumped on our BMX bikes and rode up to what I remember being my first time seeing a live zydeco band! It was Clifton, there with his crown and three-piece suit and big white accordion strapped on. Lil' Buck was the guitarist on the bandstand that afternoon and his playing and tone and the entire sound of zydeco just made a massive impression on me.
Overall, I just distinctly remember thinking that The Stones music my buddies and I had just been rehearsing back in the garage - tunes like "She's So Cold", "Black Limousine", and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" weren’t all that different from the zydeco music that these "old black dudes" (they were then younger than I am now) with an accordion were jamming in the park. But how could that be?! Skip to forty- something years later and the pieces and cultures come together to prove it just so!
The Stones came to New Orleans to play Jazz Fest last year, and the day after their show I hosted a lunch at Antoine's where Mick turned up (some of his children were staying at mine in The Quarter and had been invited). I immediately alerted Dickie Landry that he should get his butt over to the restaurant and that I was saving him the seat next to Mick. Sure enough, when Dickie came in, Mick jumped up and recounted going with Dickie to the Clifton gig in Watts. He said he remembered it "just like it was yesterday." He even corroborated the infamous punchline that Dickie had always told of Clifton thanking Mick for having "written a nice article" on him upon Dickie announcing that Mick was from "The Rolling Stones". Apparently unaware of the band, Clifton had thought Mick was from the music magazine!
Having already hit up Keith Richards to be involved, Dickie and I pitched the tribute record idea directly to Mick over a classic lunch of trout meunière and brabant potatoes. A few weeks later I followed up on the ask at a tour stop in Atlanta, by bringing Mick a print of Dickie's photograph of Clifton and brother Cleveland that has ended up being the cover for the long-play compilation tribute record on Valcour. In the fall of last year, after the tour was over, I was additionally in touch with Mick's bother Chris Jagger, who himself has a Cajun & Zydeco band in England. Chris reports having been a fan of Clifton since Mick first introduced him to the music by bringing back a couple Arhoolie records (including "Bon Ton Rouler") for Christmas in 1969. At that point, Mick was back in touch and picked out a couple of tunes to cover for the tribute including the genre's namesake "Zydeco Sont Pas Sale”.
As per Mick's request, I cut the backing track using local Lafayette A-list players. Clifton's long-time drummer and one of the last surviving band members to have played with Clifton, Robert St. Julien, is holding down the "ferocious" (quipped Keith) groove. Dave Ranson from Sonny Landreth and John Hiatt's band laid down thumping bass and Grammy winning accordion prince, Steve Riley played Clifton-inspired accordion. Clifton's and Lil’ Buck’s nephew, Curley Taylor (a fine zydeco accordionist/bandleader in his own right) along with Russ Broussard added rubboard and extra percussion. As producer, I tried to rein in the asymmetrical traditional folk arrangement to something a bit more concise, like a pop song. I have always associated The Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" as being kind of similar to a zydeco two-step groove. So, I imagined that one when we were making the track bed.
In Paris, Mick Jagger gave an astonishingly spot-on vocal that was in perfect mid-century Creole patios French! This marks the first time Mick has ever sung in French on record as well as the first time the band has ever contributed new works for a compilation in tribute of another artist. Mick also gave us a pass of his signature raucous harmonica that dovetails perfectly with the accordion throughout. Traditionally, the tune "Zydeco Sont Pas Sale" wouldn't have instrumentation/accompaniment beyond just accordion, drums and rubboard. It's derived from a (hundreds of years) old Creole "La-La" dance tune. And to this day, on Louisiana bandstands, the tune being called is a chance for the auxiliary band members to jump off stage during a four-hour set and quickly hit the restroom! As producer, I was more than a little anxious about to how exactly to direct my guitar heroes Keith and Ronnie in adding multiple complimentary guitar parts to the already rockin' basic track. But they both came in, as per legend and lore, and immediately had their unique way with getting right inside the music. Instantly they made the track and zydeco their very own style! Keith led by dropping in with his iconic fingerstyle "stabs" before the accordion part was even introduced! As a guitarist who's been fired from a few zydeco bands in my day, I can attest to Keith's bold approach here being the exact way to get oneself shot the stink-eye by a local Louisiana zydeco bandleader! He then used bendy licks to navigate and emphasize the idiosyncratic traditional accordion chord changes... Not all that dissimilar to his approach on iconic Stones tunes like "Honky Tonk Women". Ronnie instinctively held down a funky boogie rhythm part in a way that a modern zydeco guitarist might, whilst bobbing with Keith to creating the classic "weave" that those two are so well known for. At the very end of the track you can hear Ronnie throwing in a tasty blues run lick as exuberant punctuation!
The end result is that The Rolling Stones doing Clifton Chenier doesn't come off like just some cute cultural cameo. Those cats totally dug in and had their way with the music, and it pretty quickly ended up sounding majestic and tough... Like rock n' roll and The Rolling Stones! I hope fans of both the band and of Louisiana music will agree that "Zydeco Sont Pas Sale" stands up alongside some the best Rolling Stone boogie sides. The verdict is already in down south, where the record has the local folks out on the floor zydeco two-steppin to it at top Lafayette area dancehalls.
CC Adcock, April 2025