Songs marked important periods in Dave Robicheaux' life.
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. Vietnam 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. And some music
here. On human exploitation
here. On Angola
here. On Louisiana's shadow self
here.
And on police violence and our complicity in same
here.
(My selections might give the impression that
Dave Robicheaux (channeling James Lee Burke) is a real downer about
South Louisiana. Of course, Dave Robicheaux is a homicide detective,
so that has an effect on the topics he talks about, but even so, Dave's
love of Louisiana, the people, and culture do shine through.)
Dave's music
I've now read all 20 of the Dave Robicheaux books, and I'll roll out some more posts on same. But here's my round-up of Dave's music.
Dave talked about four songs in the last book I read (not the last Dave Robicheaux book),
Creole Belle.
The first is called
Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar, by Will Bradley:
Then there's Just A Dream, by Jimmy Clanton:
And Faded Love, by Bob Wills:
Bob Wills'
San Antonio Rose played a role in the book:
James Lee Burke, by way of Dave Robicheaux, has introduced me to music I wouldn't have otherwise known.
Other songs from prior posts:
From Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Some Fine Music (March 2014):
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."
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:
From Louisiana: Angola and... (April 2014)
Angola is the Louisiana State Prison.
Like a few other American prisons - such as Alcatraz, Folsom, Attica, Rikers - its infamy also elicits a perverse ... awe? reverence? pride? I don't know, but whatever it is, it says something uncomfortable about humans.
Dave Robicheaux on Angola
(See references to fictional homicide detective, Dave Robicheaux
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.)
From Jolie's Bounce (2002):
It
is difficult to describe in a convincing way the kind of place Angola
was in the Louisiana of my youth, primarily because no society wishes to
believe itself capable of the kinds of abuse that occur when we allow
our worst members, usually psychopaths themselves, to have sway over the
powerless.
For the inmates on the Red Hat gang, which
was assigned to the levee along the river, it was double time and
hit-it-and-git-it from sunrise to sunset, or what the guards called
"cain't-see to cain't-see." The guards on the Red Hat gang arbitrarily
shot and killed and buried troublesome convicts without missing a beat
in the work schedule. The bones of those inmates still rest, unmarked,
under the buttercups and the long green roll of the Mississippi levee.
The
sweatboxes were iron cauldrons of human pain set in concrete on Camp A,
where Leadbelly, Robert Pete Williams, Hogman Matthew Maxey, and Guitar Welch did their time. Convicts who passed out on work details were
stretched on anthills. Trusty guards, mounted on horseback and armed
with chopped-down double-barreled shotguns, had to serve the time of any
inmate they let escape. There was a high attrition rate among convicts
who tried to run.
(links added)
'course, when I thnk of Angola, I think of the old state prison in New Mexico, site of the massacre at the
1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary Revolt.
And of the growing unsettledness about solitary confinement of our prisoners.
Which brings me to this March 2014 article in The Guardian:
Why Do We Let 80,00 Americans Suffer a 'Slow-Motion Torture of Burying Alive'? The article compares the experience of Sarah Shroud, who spent 13 months in solitary confinement in Iran, with that of American prisoners who face similar conditions for the indefinite future.
You can read more about solitary confinement
here.
