DID YOU KNOW…
Ray Charles, Little Richard, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Floyd Cramer, Joe Turner, and Lloyd Price all lived and/or recorded in Louisiana.
Benny Spellman’s back-up vocals on Ernie K-Doe’s song “Mother-In-Law” sparked a long-running feud between the two that culminated in a fist fight on the studio floor.
Because the legal drinking age in Louisiana was 18 as opposed to 21 in Texas, an underage Janis Joplin often crossed over the state line from her home in Port Arthur, Texas, to Louisiana. It was the swamp pop of the Louisiana roadhouses and honkytonks that influenced her singing style in her meteoric but brief career.
Some of the greatest early talents of rock ‘n’ roll hailed from Louisiana or were directly connected to the state in some form. That’s the consensus of Tom Aswell, author of Louisiana Rocks: The True Genesis of Rock and Roll by Pelican Publishing of New Orleans.
Six of the first 10 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for instance, were connected to Louisiana. And then there were the dozens of other musicians responsible for the birth of the true American genre who aren’t in the Hall of Fame.
Aswell looks at all these pioneers, including Cosimo Matassa, who recorded the music at his Rampart Street studio as early as 1947. The encyclopedia-style book includes all aspects of rock influences, including Cajun, swamp pop, zydeco and blues, and provides wonderful biographies of the state’s musical legacies.
For more on this book:
http://www.louisianarockstomaswell.com/mediakit.pdf
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