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Island On The Bayou |
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| Troy Shondell |
If you take Highway 90 (or “Route 90” as Clarence “Bon Ton” Garlow would have it) out past Mosca’s Restaurant to the settlement of Des Allemands you’ll see the Lucky 7 Truck Stop on the left hand side of the road. Next door is a general store of sorts that houses Somme’s Marina and Swamp Tours. If you look closely you’ll see a sign that simply says “Bar” with an arrow pointing towards a bayou just a few feet away. Blink and you’ll miss it, but in the corner of the building is one of the smallest bar rooms in the state of Louisiana, and behind that, stretching several hundred feet all the way to the water, is a roofed but open concrete dance pavilion as large as said bar is minuscule, replete with huge tables and enough room for hundreds of two steppers. The bandstand—which is backed right up against the bayou—is marked by an imposing bomb of unknown vintage that hangs just a few feet above the vocalist’s head. It’s emblazoned with the legend “Shell For A Twenty Foot Gator.” Welcome to Gilligan’s Island, owned by the multi-faceted P.E. Gilligan and his lovely wife Mary. Gilligan, who pioneered much of the swamp pop programming on KLRZ (also known as the Ragin’ Cajun) 100.3 FM, opened the bar a few months ago for the same reason that he’s poured countless hours into two AM radio stations of which he is the general manager; KAGY 1510 New Orleans and KMRC 1430 Morgan City: He’s unfailingly dedicated to swamp pop music. Clearly, this man is on a mission.
“Something that Joe Barry and I used to talk about all the time,” says
Gilligan, referencing his late friend and exhaling smoke from an ever-present
Pall Mall
cigarette, “is that we’ve gotta keep this art form alive until
somebody comes along and picks up the shovel. We’ve turned these radio
stations all swamp pop and the ratings are showing.”
Gilligan’s Island, he notes, is the only all swamp pop nightclub in South
Louisiana. Perhaps, but Gilligan is also a die-hard fan of the rock ‘n’ roll,
R&B and country and western that the music derives itself from. Besides leading
his own bands and releasing his own records, he’s toured with both Johnny
Paycheck and Chuck Berry.
“I’ve been playing music since I was 13-years-old,” says Gilligan,
who was raised in Davenport, Iowa, just a bit North up the Mississippi River
from where he now resides in La Rose. “I grew up listening to Joe Barry,
Fats Domino and “Frogman” Henry but I never thought I’d
meet any of ’em. Now some of ’em are my best friends. This is
what I grew up wanting to do, I just didn’t know it was here.”
Relocating to another river town, St. Louis, after graduating high school
in 1966, Gilligan’s first taste of South Louisiana came in 1979. He never
left and swears that he never will.
“I first came to Louisiana by bus. I was sent here for six months with
a barge line called River Way. After my six months was over I started another
job with
them that kept me here for another six months. At the end of that they said, ‘We
have a desk job in St. Louis for you.’ Well, me and desks don’t
get along. St. Louis is supposed to be a music mecca,” he continues,
rattling off a few names like Berry, Ike and Tina Turner and Bob
Kuban and
the In-Men. “But
the wealth of musicians in South Louisiana, West Mississippi and East Texas
is just endless.”
His grand opening, which took place on Saturday, May 28, featured not
only the Frogman but Texas soul shouter Roy Head and Indiana rock ‘n’ roller
Troy Shondell, who scored an ethereal, off the wall hit in the early ’60s
with the tragic lost love ballad “This Time.” It’s a song that,
for all its mysterious atmospherics, could very easily have been cut in South
Louisiana. The same thing could be said about its flipside, “Girl After
Girl” and the aptly titled “The Trance.”
Parallel universes exist in the music world, as Shondell noted to me
a few years ago. Although he was from the Midwest, he bonded with Rod
Bernard while
on tour
when both artists realized that their styles bore a striking similarity
to one another; coming, as they did, from the same emotional place. And
like
Roy Head,
Shondell has long been a favorite in the Gulf Coast region.
Then there’s Houma’s Jerry Raines, an artist for whom Gilligan holds
a special place in his heart. Raines recorded a plethora of great discs for Morgan
City’s Drew-blan label, scoring a hit with his 1959 debut single, “Our
Teenage Love.” Cut at Cosimo’s studio with a backing band comprised
of Roy Montrell on guitar, Lee Allen on sax, John
Boudreaux on drums, Earl
Stanley on bass and Mac Rebennack on piano, it was subsequently covered by
Dale and Grace,
Rod Bernard, Freddy Fender (in both English and Spanish), Warren
Storm, Tommy
McLain and most recently, the Foret Tradition.
In 1961 when Joe Barry hit the national charts with “I’m A Fool To
Care,” his endless touring schedule left his band the Vikings in need of
a vocalist. Raines stepped in and the Vikings subsequently became his backing
band on record as well, just as they already had for Mickey Gilley, Barbara
Lynn and star-crossed singer/ songwriter Jimmy Donley. Donley was the author of Gulf
Coast gems like “Think It Over,” “Forbidden Love,” “Born
To Be A Loser,” “Forever Lillie Mae” and “I’m To
Blame,” the lyrics of which eerily prefigured his 1963 suicide. He’s
still legend in the bayou country and his songs are as popular as ever.
But what of Jerry Raines, who’s still very much with us?
“I’ve been reading the Jimmy Donley book Born To Be A Loser,” says
Gilligan, waxing poetic about the singer’s music and tragic life.
(Authored and published by swamp pop singer Johnnie Allan, it’s
just been reprinted by Jadfel Publishing).
“Jerry’s every bit as great a singer and songwriter as Jimmy Donley
and he’s been to the school of hard knocks just like Jimmy and Joe Barry.
But he’s still here and he doesn’t get the respect he deserves. So
the radio station, the bar and the Treater band got together to honor
Jerry on June
12 with Jerry Raines Day.”
Raines performed backed by Treater, whom he’s currently recording his first
full length album with. (His early sides were anthologized in 2001 on Night Train
International’s Dangerous Redhead, a smorgasboard of stirring South Louisiana
ballads, second line rockers and previously unreleased cuts). A later edition
of Hidden Charms will feature the full Jerry Raines story, but meanwhile, you
can see him at Gilligan’s whenever Treater appears, which is quite often.
If you’ve ever been to Tootsie’s in Nashville, the tiny bar around
the corner from the old Ryman Auditorium where just about every country and western
star in history has hung out, then you’ll know Gilligan’s goal. “I
want this to be the Tootsie’s of Des Allemands,” he laughs. Since
so many musicians know him from playing their records on the radio, it’s
not hard to see it happening. There are a few artists who he’s actually
had to fight to pay; they tell him that the exposure he’s given—and
continues to give them—via the airwaves is payment enough.
Speaking with Gilligan by phone on a recent Wednesday evening, the
Tootsie’s
dream didn’t seem too far off. “I just got an old guy who came in,
he calls himself Stringbean. He’s beatin’ on an old F-hole guitar
and his wife’s singing, she sounds just like Patsy
Cline. She started singing ‘Walking
After Midnight’ and I thought it was the jukebox. She doesn’t even
look like she can sing, but she opens her mouth and…” He holds the
phone up as Stringbean belts out an appropriately haunting rendition of Hank
Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
“Crazy!” he thunders into the phone. “They said, ‘We’ll
come in and sing a few songs if you buy us a beer.’ I said, ‘Come
on in!’”
Besides cutting a new album of his own, Gilligan is currently gearing
up for the South Louisiana International Pirogue races, which he’ll hold on
September 3 and 4 in the bayou behind his club.
For Gilligan’s Island schedules, tickets or information call Gilligan
at (985)-693-2125.
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