It's about time. Clifton Chenier finally got the biggest birthday gift of his life. For what would have been his 100th birthday, Louisiana based independent label Valcour Records, who specialize in both traditional and innovative Louisiana music, assembled a stellar cast of movers and shakers to pay tribute to the man who planted the roots of the music that made their careers.
It starts off with a bang, the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood ripping it up on Chenier's signature tune “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés,” the song credited with giving Zydeco music its name. Jagger adds locomotive harmonica blasts between frenzied shouts of the title in French, and Steve Riley adds red hot accordion licks. Although it doesn't sound like anything the Stones do on a regular basis, it holds the roots of everything that they ever did. Riley, who helped bring rock into Cajun music as the leader of the Mamou Playboys and preserved swamp pop in The Lil' Band O' Gold, tears it up in his usual fashion, daring you not to be able to keep still while his hands are on the keys.
