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.