Bennie Graeff is sitting in his living room, dubbing old reel-to-reel tapes of his band onto a cassette — not so much for posterity as for upcoming rehearsals. After a hiatus of more than 20 years, one of southwest Louisiana’s most influential and least-recorded bands, Rufus Jagneaux, is gigging again.
“We’re better now,” says Graeff, the group’s bassist and de facto frontman. “Some of the tunes have changed a little, but that’s what people liked about us. They really didn’t know what to expect, and they knew they might never hear a song the same way twice — which is one reason we taped everything.”
Rufus really did tape everything. Their recording sessions (which resulted in a dozen-or-so local, early-’70’s 45s), their rehearsals, their live performances — every one of them exists somewhere on one of Graeff’s meticulously catalogued and coded reel-to-reels. Ironically, no Rufus Jagneaux LP, cassette, or CD has ever been issued. With the exception of a handful of various-artists swamp-pop compilations, Rufus’s seminal blend of ’60’s rock, ’70’s boogie, and perennial southwest Louisiana elan exists only in the memories of those fortunate enough to have heard the group perform. But if the group and the Ville Platte music impresario Floyd Soileau have their way, the long overdue Rufus best-of may finally see the light. “We’re going to do a cassette of the old stuff,” says Graeff, “and Floyd says that if it does O.K., he’ll do a CD.”
The warm reception that has greeted Soileau’s other recent swamp-pop reissues (Rod Bernard, Randy and the Rockets) suggests that “O.K.” would be the least a Rufus Jagneaux collection — especially one including their 1971 signature tune, “Opelousas Sostan” — would do. Although “Sostan”‘s popularity carried with it a backlash (“Some of the more-Cajun-than-thou people thought we were ridiculing Cajuns,” Graeff once told OffBeat), its deft grafting of the bon temps rouler vibe into a country-rock setting has enabled the song to outlast its detractors. “It’s gonna feel so good!” shouted Bruce MacDonald, the group’s lead guitarist and sometimes Coteau member, moments before Rufus launched into the song last May at Lafayette’s Grant Street Dancehall. If the crowd’s reaction and the band’s enthusiasm were reliable indicators, MacDonald’s prediction was on the money.
According to Graeff, the song was originally recorded under less-than-friendly circumstances during one of the group’s early gigs in Lafayette. “A guy from ASCAP was checking for clubs that weren’t paying the fee for playing recorded music. The guy who owned the club called us and said, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t play any more because I don’t want to pay the fee.’ I said, ‘You don’t have to. We’re not playing anybody else’s songs.’ So he put me in touch with the ASCAP guy, who as much as called me a liar. I said, “Listen, we’re going to play again. Come on down. We’ll play all our songs, and you can tape them. If you find any that are ASCAP or BMI, you can charge us royalties.'”
The ASCAP representative didn’t make a tape (“He said, ‘I ain’t never heard any of this stuff,'” Graeff recalls), but Rufus Jagneaux did. “We said, ‘We’ve got a good demo tape here,'” says Graeff. “‘Let’s make a record! We’ll put out a forty-five, get some publicity, and get more jobs!'” Graeff brought the tape to Soileau. “He fast-forwarded it to where there was all this screaming and yelling. He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Oh, we just ran through one of our crazy songs that everybody liked.’ So he listened again. The song was ‘Sostan.'”
The rest, as they say, is history, but, given the fact that so little of it is readily available, it’s an oddly inaccessible history. In order to avoid repeating their biggest career gaffe, the current lineup — Graeff, MacDonald, Victor Palmer (keyboards), Ronnie Palmer (sax), Gary Graeff (guitar), Jerry LeJeune (drums) — is intent on capturing this phase of its career on a full-length, studio album.
Rufus also hopes to show its kids that good rock ‘n’ roll didn’t begin with Nirvana. “Victor has two kids, Ronnie has two kids, Gary has two kids, Bruce has a child, Jerry has a child, and I’ve got three,” says Graeff. “There’s even a grandfather in the band. That’s one reason some of us are doing this, because they missed everything. They ask, ‘What was all that about?’ We just tell them, ‘You’re gonna see.'”
“Jagneaux? Yeah? Come on! When?” Mike Lachney, the Kinder-based zydeco producer and talent scout, has just been informed of one of Rufus Jagneaux’s upcoming Lafayette-area performances. “Oh, man! I’d like to go see that!”
The 40-something Lachney is standing barefoot — he’s been known to work with his toes as well as his fingers — in the control room of his Bad Weather Studio, an increasingly popular recording spot for up-and-coming zydeco acts from both Louisiana and Texas. Actually, the control room is nothing more than a former bedroom in Lachney’s Kinder home, the studio itself a one-room addition that he built two years ago. By 1996, after 25 years of trying his hand at singing (his version of Slim Harpo’s “Raining in My Heart” was a local hit in the mid-’80’s), songwriting (his imaginatively opportunistic “Joe Pete Messin’ with My Toot Toot” was a hit for Warren Storm, Carol Fran, and himself under the name Bad Weather at around the same time), rackjobbing (he was a one-man distribution service for Eddie Shuler’s Goldband Records in the early ’70’s), and disco-DJ-ing , he’d finally found that finding, courting, and producing zydeco artists is what he does best.
“I built the studio for Rosie Ledet more than anything else,” says Lachney, “It was really for her to do her thing. But as time went on, more and more people found out I had this little studio, so I’ve used it to promote other zydeco acts as well.”
Ledet is the star of Lachney’s biggest success story to date. The two met while Lachney was recording Morris Ledet, Rosie’s zydeco-musician husband. “That was about 1991,” Lachney recalls. “We’d practice at his house, but Rosie was very shy. She’d go in the bedroom and hide.” Three years later, her shyness had worn off. “I got a phone call one night from Morris. He said, ‘Mike, I got a surprise here I want you to hear. Can we come over?’ They came over with a tiny cassette that they’d made at home, and Morris said, ‘Listen to this.’ I could barely make it out. He said, ‘This is my wife, Rosie, playing the accordion and singing, and these are some songs she wrote.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Yeah. When I was at work, she would open up my accordion and practice and never tell me. Then one day, when I came home, she said, “Come see, Morris. I got a surprise to show you.”‘”
Impressed by the tape, Lachney took it to his fellow studio maven Mark Miller. Within 24 hours Rosie Ledet was a recording artist. “We cut that thing in one night, mixed it, and the next day I said, ‘You know, Morris, instead of you putting this out under my label, let’s take it to Floyd at Maison de Soul.’ We played it for him and said, ‘What you think?’ He said, ‘Let’s go for it!’ We made the deal right then and there. I was the producer, and he was the label. It’s been working good ever since. Now, she’s a big ol’ star — overseas, everywhere.”
Lachney remains on the lookout for his next “big ol’ star.” With major label prospects looming ever larger for Ledet, he knows that his days as her producer may be numbered. To this end, he has kicked operations at Bad Weather into high gear, turning out strong albums by Donna Angelle (Old Man’s Sweetheart) and Leo and Leeroy Thomas (Leo Thomas Is a Sun-a-ma Gun) in recent months.
In the case of Angelle, Lachney’s work has already begun to pay off. The high-quality of her album in general and its attention-getting, Lachney-penned title song in particular have landed her gigs with the likes of Beau Jocque and Boozoo Chavis, the “old man” of “Old Man’s Sweetheart.” And just how has the notoriously cranky zydeco legend responded to what is essentially a lascivious come-on set to music?
“Rumor had it that at first he was all mad — ‘Y’all makin’ money offa me!'” Lachney laughs. “But it wasn’t that we were making money off him. We were paying tribute. Anyway, two weeks ago Donna did a big concert in Texas. The headliners were Boozoo, Beau Jocque, J. Paul, Jr., and her. She and Boozoo met for the first time. They hugged each other, and everything was all lovely. He said, ‘Girl! I’m gonna help you get some bookings, yeah, now!’ So he’s all happy now.”
And so — at least until the majors come a-wooing again — is Lachney.
