Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin with Canray Fontenot

Singer and accordionist Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin was a crucial link to the musique Creole traditions of a bygone era -- his music kept alive the Cajun "la la" music which developed in the African-American communities of his native southwestern Louisiana, and which was a clear antecedent of the contemporary zydeco sound. Born in rural Duralde in either 1914 or 1916, Ardoin was tagged with his nickname -- translating as "Dry Wood" -- because as a child he was always the first one in the fields to seek shelter during a rainstorm; born and raised as a sharecropper, farming remai...