Originally published in Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Canray Fontenot learned from his father

by Jim Bradshaw

Canray Fontenot was born at l'Anse des Rougeau in Evangeline Parish in 1918. He was the son of Adam Fontenot, whom some Louisiana French music historians say was one of the greatest accordion players of all time, perhaps the equal of Adam's friend and contemporary, Amédé Ardoin.

To illustrate that point, Canray told the same story in several published interviews. This version was printed in "The Kingdom of Zydeco," by Michael Tisserand. "There was one night when you couldn't tell where one began and the other stopped. Adam was playing a dance when Canray's mother, Ozemire, also played the accordion. But Canray always played the fiddle, learning on one that he made from a cigar box and wire pulled from the screen door on the front of their home.

He told the tale of his beginnings to Barry Jean Ancelet, printed in Makers of Cajun Music: 'When I started playing with my ... father, I think I was eleven years old. I could play second fiddle a little. I wasn't much of a player then, but I did all right. I had my little violin and we would play lots of dances. They would put a table out. They had these old, homemade tables, make with a hammer and nails. They would put a table out and put some chairs on the table, and that was our bandstand. I'll never forget one dance that we played, a wedding dance. I could follow my late father, so when the dance finished I came out with four bits, fifty cents, and that was a lot of money in those days.

"Black dances almost always lasted all night long. The houses were so small that the people had to dance in shifts. One group would dance, then they had to leave to let another group come in. Then the first group would come back. And that went on all night long."

Canray played with Bois Sec Ardoin for more than 40 years. Here is what he told Ancelet.

"Bois Sec started playing before my father died. He and my late uncle started playing together. They played at house dances. Sometimes they played for little dance halls. When my uncle died, I was getting pretty sure of myself. My father had died, too, in 1938. So, I started playing with Bois Sec. Then the music started changing and everyone wanted to hear hillbilly music. I used to be pretty good at that kind of music. I played with a fellow named George Lennis who used to sing all those songs and he played the guitar well, too. I had a band for a long time, with stringed instruments in it. We played all over and we were always booked, too. Then, we got two young fellows to play with us. They were good players, but they had bad manners. I said to myself, 'Oh, well. I'm going to go back and play with Bois Sec,' and we've been playing together for years now, at least forty years."

Together they appeared at Carnegie Hall, at the annual Rhode Island Cajun/Blue Grass Festival, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and at numerous folk festivals both in the United States and abroad.

Fontenot and Bois See were known as a team, but Canray also established his own reputation. More than one critic has called him "the greatest black Louisiana French fiddler of our time." Some say simply, "the greatest fiddler," of either race. recognized..

He did not play zydeco, and didn't have much use for it once telling a BBC interviewer, "Zydeco? I'm going to tell you one thing. There ain't no such thing. Because that's nothing but snap beans."

That is not to say that he didn't play a distinctive music particularly in later years, when the old Louisiana French music was being submerged under "hotter" zydeco and other blues-influenced sounds. Canray's music could always be of music

He explained it this way: "My music was a gift, you know. There are people who play all their lives and can never get it, then those who have it don't want to use it. Everyone has their own style. Mine is God-given and no matter what kind I play, it comes out Canray."

In 1986 he and Bois See received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In the early 1990s, Canray was often a featured guest performer with the Cajun dance band Filé, serving as a mentor to that band's fiddler and guitarist D'Jalma Garnier.

Fontenot died in August 1995. Typical of the tributes given to him at the time of his death was this one by Lafayette music writer Todd Mouton, "Canray played his own style of music, and he was old school before there was an old school. His music was born before Cajun and zydeco were given names, and his joie de vivre, himself like his fiddling, made an incredible impression on all he encountered."

[ Louisiana Creole Fiddle ]