Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Some Fine Music

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Viet Nam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here. And alcohol here.

Dave on some fine music of his youth

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

"The lyrics and the bell-like reverberation of Guitar Slim's rolling chords haunted me. Without ever using words to describe either the locale or the era in which he had lived, his song re-created the Louisiana I had been raised in: the endless fields of sugarcane thrashing in the wind under a darkening sky, yellow dirt roads and the Hadacol and Jax beer signs nailed on the sides of general stores, horse-drawn buggies that people tethered in stands of gum trees during Sunday Mass, clapboard juke joints where Gatemouth Brown and Smiley Lewis and Lloyd Price played, and the brothel districts that flourished from sunset to dawn and somehow became invisible in the morning light."

Clarence Gatemouth Brown. Source: wikipedia

Here's the song Gatemouth Boogie, which Mr. Brown says he made up on the spot one night during a performance, when he stood in for an ailing T-Bone Walker:

Here's a song by Lloyd Price - Stagger Lee: