The term "Cajun" refers to the descendants of Acadian people who were expelled from eastern Canada by the British in the mid-1700s. After enduring a traumatic relocation marked by violence and loss, many Acadians eventually settled in Spanish-controlled Louisiana, where they were given land and freedom to maintain their language and Catholic faith. Over time, their culture adapted, blending Acadian traditions with elements from Native American, Spanish, African, and other influences. The word "Cajun" itself emerged from English speakers' adaptation of "Acadian," though it later took on pejorative meanings, prompting some to identify as Creole instead. Cajun culture thrived through resilience and inclusivity, notably in music, where instruments like the fiddle and accordion were adopted and reinvented. Artists like Doug Kershaw helped popularize Cajun music, bridging it with country and mainstream audiences, illustrating how Cajun identity has persisted by honoring its past while embracing change.
What does the word "cajun" mean to you? What do you think it means to most people? I think we could ask that question of a hundred different people and get close to a hundred different answers. I can't tell you what it means, but I can tell you where it came from, or I can tell you where they came from. And before I do that, I just want to let you know that I'm positive, I will be mispronouncing words and names in this episode. That's just something we're all going to have to live with. Alright. Cajuns are people with accadian ancestors who ended up in Louisiana after being forcibly evicted from eastern Canada by the British in the 1700s, 20 years before the American Revolutionary War. The first accadian were children of French peasants who, in the early 1600s, colonized the southeastern part of what we today call Canada. It's worth noting that some percentage of these accadians were mixed race. Unlike what really happened down by Plymouth Rock, relations between the French settlers and first nations of Canada, mainly the Mick Mac, were actually pretty good. They really did learn local methods of hunting and fishing from the Mick Mac. Some of the French men married Mick Mac women and started families. Once trading posts are set up and the Mick Mac learn what kind of tools and goods they can acquire by trading furs, it essentially changes the structure of their society. Things seem to be going well. Then the British Empire begins throwing its weight around. The first capital of Acadia had been established by France in 1605. In 1613, British troops burn it to the ground. During the next 100 years, there are many battles fought between several nations over Acadia. By 1713, the British have come out on top. But the vast majority of the population is still Acadian and Mick Mac. Conflict between Great Britain and France shows no sign of calming down. So the British demand an oath of unconditional allegiance from the Acadian people, who remember originally came from France and speak at least a version of the French language. But that doesn't make them inherently unified in allegiance to France. Or inherently unified in anything really. Still, for the Acadians to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain could make them obliged in the future to fight for the British against the French or against the Mick Mac. That's a problem. Because the Mick Mac, they aren't about to concede ownership of their lands to anyone. In fact, they aren't even aware that France has been claiming ownership of Acadia for 100 years already. Whether or not it binds the Acadians to take up arms, signing this oath of allegiance to Britain will be viewed by the Mick Mac as a betrayal and put Acadian villages at risk of violent raids. So what the Acadians do here is negotiate an agreement of neutrality with Britain. Their official stance is they just want to stay out of it. Only some of the Acadians and many Mick Mac remain extremely anti-British. These continue with some regularity over the next 40 years or so, until this all finally comes to a head in what Americans call the French and Indian War beginning in 1754. One year into this war, Britain decides there's really no reason for them to mess with any of this Acadian bullshit. It doesn't matter who says they're loyal to Britain or not, who says they're neutral or not, all the Acadians have to go. These troops round up entire villages, put everyone on boats, and ship them off to the 13 British colonies on the east coast of America. In 1758, they begin shipping Acadians all the way over to France and Great Britain. From beginning to end, this process takes about 10 years. There were 14,000 Acadians in the area before the first wave of the expulsion. By the year 1764, less than 3,000 are left, and if this sounds to you like a simple and peaceful relocation of citizens, it is not that. Villages are burned, families are separated and shipped to different parts of the world on overcrowded ships. Acadians starve to death, drown when ships sink, and many of the ones who make it to Great Britain are forced to live in packed warehouses where they die of plague. The British didn't ship anyone to Louisiana. Among those Acadians who were anti-British from the start was a man named Joseph Broussard. In 1724, when a group of Mick Mack attacked the British-occupied capital of Acadia, Joseph Broussard raided alongside them. He fought in and led attacks against the British for the next 40 years until his capture in 1762. The following year after the war came to an end, Broussard and his family were sent to live in what is now Haiti, then a French territory. By this time, Broussard is in his early 60s, and the tropical climate of Haiti doesn't suit his Acadian constitution. In 1765, he leads a group of 200 Acadians to the Spanish territory of Louisiana. Around 10 months before this, four small Acadian families, about 20 people in total, had traveled from Georgia to live in New Orleans. These are the first Acadians to settle in Louisiana. The Spanish attitude toward the Acadians is super relaxed. They aren't exactly integrated into mainstream society, but they are given land, a six-month supply of food, crop seed, farming supplies, and pretty much left alone to pursue their way of life. Nobody cares if they want to keep speaking Acadian French. There are no taxes to pay, and the Acadians and Spanish are both predominantly Roman Catholic, which had been one of the big problems between the Acadians and the Protestant English. The Acadians are so comfortable in Louisiana, they write to family members scattered throughout the world to let them know this is a place they can come live in peace. More Acadians make their way to Louisiana. We can move through the rest of this pretty quickly. 1775, the American Revolutionary War begins. Acadians throughout the colonies take up arms against the British to help the United States gain independence from England. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase brings Louisiana into the United States. Americans move to Louisiana in large numbers to find most of the unclaimed land is swamp and unclear woodlands. Many Acadians are happy to sell their property for maybe more than it's worth, move in to the backwoods and swamp lands, build modest homes and houseboats, get back to hunting and fur trapping as a means of survival, as their ancestors had done. It's not all of the Acadians doing this and it's not only Acadians doing this, but it comes to be thought of as the Acadian way of life, living off the land in this manner. Over the next 100 years, the way English-speaking Americans say the word "Akadian" it changes. The Acadian French pronunciation doesn't emphasize the A at the beginning of the word. And the D probably sounds like a J to English ears. What they hear and what they start saying is Cajun. The early Cajuns wouldn't necessarily think of themselves as poor. They either have what they need or know how to get it from the land around them and are happy to do so. Two people pursuing a more metropolitan way of life, none of that makes any sense. Even other Acadians who stay in the cities take steps to distance themselves from their swamp land cousins. As the word Cajun begins to take on a derogatory meaning, similar to Hick or Hillbilly, more and more of the city, Acadians choose to self-identify as Creole instead. The full context of this barri-ambiguous word is far too complicated to get into here. Suffice to say in the time and place we're discussing, it's seen as classier and more refined to be Creole rather than Cajun. So a strong emphasis on one's roots is implied by either term. The early Cajuns of Louisiana exist on the outskirts of society, and this seems to be at least partly a matter of preference. They live in tight-knit communities which does help to preserve their Acadian traditions. Though we only have to look at the language they speak to see how inclusive they are of other cultures. Their version of French borrows elements from Spanish, American Indian and African languages. There would be no cause for this unless these people are a part of the conversation. The weird thing is when elements of other cultures are co-opted by Cajuns, these things tend to become thought of as Cajun. This is the strength of their culture and how it has survived into the modern age. Cajuns hold on to the past while embracing the present. Here's some of the earliest Cajun music to be recorded. It's the Cigarra Brothers in 1928 doing a song mistakenly labeled as "My Sweet Heart Run Away." Sounds like accordion, triangle, maybe someone tapping their foot a little bit, and a voice. That's it. Admitting that I'm no expert, there is no argument against this being 100% pure Cajun music. If it gets any more Cajun than this, I'm not sure we have a record of it. But the accordion does not come from Acadia, and it doesn't even come from France. Another major instrument in Cajun music is the fiddle. The fiddle comes from neither Acadia nor France, and calling it a violin doesn't make it come from there either. So two major instruments of Cajun music, neither of which are Cajun, become so in the hands of Cajun players. We could think of this early Cajun music as using whatever instruments are around or easily built to perform in a style handed down from traditional French ballads, which as we've already seen with their language is a perfectly Cajun thing to do. As in every aspect of the culture, the passing of time sees Cajun music absorbing more elements from nearby genres. Country music in particular, and this one goes both ways. When Cajun music finds mainstream recognition and popularity, it's on country radio. Gary Schulte's 1946 recording of the traditional Jolie Blanc is widely regarded as the first hit, Cajun Song. And probably the most well-known instance of a country musician borrowing from Cajun music is Hank Williams Seniors Jambalaya in 1952. Some people would say what Hank Williams is doing is to make sure that he's not a man. Some people would say what Hank did there wasn't so much borrowing from Cajun music as it was lifting the melody of a song called Grand Texas. Only that melody was around for about 20 years before Grand Texas. I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce these song titles, but here you go. [Music]
, [Music] [Music] And finally, Grand Texas. Now, I've talked a lot about Western Swing this season. So you may hear that and think it's just Western Swing with Cajun French vocals. It's not really that simple. Because Western Swing is just what happened when country musicians played Swing jazz. And jazz was practically invented in New Orleans. So what you've got is Texas and Oklahoma borrowing a cup of flour from Louisiana and Louisiana borrowing a cup of sugar from Texas and Oklahoma. It's all neighborly and all of this. This is how eventually, in 1969, you end up with Doug Kershaw on TV in the first episode of the Johnny Cash show becoming the most famous Cajun musician in history. You ask one person and he might say it's a violin, another will say it's a fiddle. Well down in the Bayou country of Louisiana, the Cajun people near the fiddle and made it speak their language. I want you to meet a friend of mine has been a friend for a long time that knows the Bayou and knows the fiddle. He plays 28 other musical instruments and he knows them all like he knows his own head. Welcome my friend to lose the out of man, Mr. Doug Kershaw. You'll never have a complete understanding of Doug Kershaw until you watch him play. He's probably the most high energy performer ever associated with country music. I can't think of anyone else who even comes close and that's including all the people running around arena stages with Pyro going off all over the place. This night on the Johnny Cash show, Doug's wearing a purple crushed velvet suit over a light pink pirate shirt with what looks to be pounds of frilly ruffles exploding out of it. Basically he's dressed like Prince a decade before Prince and here's the thing. Johnny Cash is obviously a huge star at this time. They gave him his own TV show and this is the first episode. A ton of people are going to be watching that no matter what. But also Bob Dylan is one of the other guests. In 1966, Bob Dylan used a motorcycle accident that may have never even happened as an excuse to withdraw from public life, bailing on professional obligations, doing no touring and releasing very little of the music he was recording. Even if that wasn't the situation, he never did and never would do very many performances on television anyway. So here, in 1969, when Bob Dylan's appearance is promoted ahead of time, the word hype doesn't begin to cover it. All of which is to say, Doug Kershaw made the right decision when the show producers gave him a choice. They told him he could have a job playing in the house band for seven shows or he could be featured in a solo spot on one show. He took the solo spot. A few months later, the Apollo 12 astronauts decide their mission control team needs to hear some music and Doug Kershaw becomes one of the first artists to be broadcast from space back to Earth. He's got a record deal with Warner Brothers. Bob Dylan brings him in the studio to play on some stuff. A pre-eagles band called Long Branch Penny Whistle have Rye Cooter and Doug play on their album. Doug performs at the Newport Folk Festival and spends a week as the opening act for Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes at the Filmore East. This is all in the year 1969. The rock music world goes head over heels for Doug Kershaw. Lucas Magazine's headline reads, Doug Kershaw, Crazy Cajun Fiddler. He lets his hair grow out some and works up a means set of Mutton Chop sideburns to play into the Wild Wolf Man image. Audiences eat it up. More TV appearances on He-Ha, Ed Sullivan, The Dean Martin Show. We're not talking about a one or two year bump from being on TV once in 1969. Get ahead to 1973. Doug goes on Midnight Special twice, including the episode with Joe Walsh and Richard Pryor. Midnight Special will have him back twice more in 1974. Still in 1973, Loudon Wayne Wright III releases the album "Attempted Mustache." Just after a single called Dead Skunk from his previous album, accidentally became a top 20 pop hit. And "Attempted Mustache" opens with the swimming song, an impossibly addictive song that does not become a pop hit but does become an instant folk music classic. ♪ And my fate I move my arms around, to my arms around ♪ Guess who Loudon brings in to finish up the song? ♪ This isn't your average overnight success story. Not only because it's a musician associated with country music, crossing over to lasting success with mainstream audiences, but also because this isn't by any definition of the term an overnight success story. Doug Kershaw had already sold millions of records with his brother Rusty a decade before Johnny Cash. ♪ And he was a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit. ♪ ♪ And while Doug is making these TV show appearances and playing fiddle on big time recording sessions in Nashville, his brother Rusty is on the other side of the country making one of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. So before I can tell you the rest of Doug's story, before I can tell you Rusty's story, I have to tell you the story of Rusty and Doug. You're listening to cocaine and rhinestones, the podcast about 20th century country music and the lives of those who gave it to us. My name is Tyler Mayhanko, I've heard these stories my whole life. As far as I can tell, here's the truth about this one. Doug Kershaw was born in 1936, the 7th of 9 children. His younger brother Rusty was born in 1938, and these kids might as well have been born on another planet. They live on a houseboat tied to a tiny island upstream from the Gulf of Mexico, South of Lake Arthur. Their father's name is Jack Kershaw. He supports his family by trapping furs, running fishing lines, and hunting alligators. Their mother, made in name Rita Broussard, is a descendant of the Joseph Broussard we heard about earlier. If Cajun's had royalty, we'd be looking at it right now. The Broussards and the Kershaws are intensely musical. Jack plays accordion, Mama Rita plays both guitar and fiddle. Apparently everyone in her family plays at least one instrument. Her brother seven plays several, and he's blind. Doug and Rusty's older brother Peewee can play all the instruments their parents play. Doug is 5 years old when Peewee is given a new fiddle. Peewee being old enough to go out with Jack every morning to check and run fishing lines. That fiddle gets left on top of a tall cabinet, and Doug gets left with strict instructions to leave it alone. When Rita leaves to check and set crab traps, little Doug climbs up there, gets the fiddle down, and teaches himself to play by doing what he's seen everyone else do with the instrument. Until one day, he drops the fiddle and puts a crack in it. Jack's never whipped Doug before, but when he comes home and sees the damaged fiddle, he tells Doug the only way out of a weapon is if he can play the thing. Doug plays three songs for him, two of them he makes up on the spot. This is all according to Doug. There's no possible way to fact check it, and he's certainly got a reputation for exaggeration. But it's a great story doesn't hurt anyone if it isn't exactly true, so who cares, right? However it happens, he becomes a pro-level fiddle player at a very young age. In Doug Kershaw's seventh year on this planet, he finds his father's body laying on the ground. Jack had shot himself in the head. There are chickens pecking around at what's left of it until Doug chases them away. As it would anyone, this scene haunts Doug for many years, maybe forever, though he would later say he found peace with his father, and became able to understand that Jack had a reason for what he did. But that reason was I don't believe Doug ever said. After Jack's suicide, times get hard for Rita and her children. She moves the entire family into the town of Lake Arthur, and gets a job washing and ironing clothes for 50 cents a day. Doug didn't have need or want a pair of shoes until this move to town. He's so used to sleeping on a houseboat that it takes him weeks to be able to fall asleep in a bed on land. In order to attend school, Doug has to learn how to speak English. Yes, this American swamp baby never learned English because all the family speaks at home is Cajun French. We can assume the same is true for Little Rusty. Doug gets it in his mind to help bring in some money by becoming a shoe shine boy in town. The only problem is he's too little to fight for a good spot. Following the places that are left, he doesn't have much luck getting customers. Until the day he takes his fiddle with him, just to kill time while standing around between shines. Maybe 8 years old, he's already mastered the instrument. The child prodigy draws a crowd. When he realizes what's happening, Doug says he'll only keep playing if some people pay to have their shoes shine between songs. He makes $10 and 20 cents that first day and the curse shots have a new family business. Quickly deciding to cut out the shining shoes part, we soon find Mamma Rita on stage at Lake Arthur's notorious bucket of blood. Her little boy Doug on fiddle beside her. Not if but when fights break out, Rita tells Doug to lay down on the stage while he plays. So there's at least a smaller chance he'll take a direct hit from a flying beer bottle. I don't know any stories that begin this way and end with that little kid becoming a banker or a doctor or a lawyer, do you? Typically, a young life put on this road never gets off of it. Big brother Peewee has a band of his own until around the time Doug turns 12. Peewee quits that other band, he and Doug start a new band. Doug teaches his little brother Rusty to play guitar and the continental playboys are in business, playing the stage of every honky-tonk that will let a bunch of children inside. You know, the real respectable type joints. The continental playboys mostly perform country music. But they sing almost entirely in Cajun French. Their repertoire is built off the jukebox selections around town. This is how Doug explained their early influences in an interview. When we started playing the bars, we also began to learn the songs of the jukeboxes. We didn't have a radio or a record player when I was growing up, so jukeboxes were really important to me. In addition to Cajun music, they would have heard the country greets like Ernest Tubb and Bob Will, plus big band stuff by Glenn Miller. Back to Doug, quote, "And I learned to play it all. I still love to play Stardust." You know, there were no labels on the jukebox, it wasn't country or jazz or Cajun, it was just music. End quote. Some fans of Cajun music will tell you that Doug and Rusty Kershaw never really made Cajun music. Again, I'm no expert and I don't really care what anyone wants to call their music. But Doug and Rusty Kershaw, the human beings, are as Cajun as it gets. Their approach to music, listening to everything around them and using what they needed from it. That's Cajun. You'll even find people out there who say Doug Kershaw isn't that good of a fiddle player. I gotta give a strong disagree there, but you don't have to take my word for it. Michael Doucette is one of the most respected Cajun fiddlers around. In 1975, he was given a grant to study Cajun fiddle under at least five legends of the field. When it comes to Cajun fiddle, he knows what he's talking about, more than I ever will. But I've known Doug for 20 years. Some people dismiss him as just a showman who does a lot of crazy things on stage, but that's not the whole story. Don't forget, he came up the hard way. He was real poor when he was growing up and he played those little bars with the chicken wire around the stages when he was just a kid. The things he sings about in Louisiana Man may sound romantic and rural, but that's the story of a hard life. You can't fault him for wanting to have more than that. You know, I've played with lots of old timers, and they all have their own rhythm, and when I've played with Doug, he has it too. It's an amazing amalgamation of notes, melodies, and rhythms that you can't fake. End quote. So all those wild man stage antics sometimes get in the way of him playing a song as well as he could, sure. This is not classical music, fiddle, not violin. It's Doug doing what he learned to do as a small child in honky-tongues, entertain the people in the room. The continental playboys may have been doing Ernest Tub songs, but if you could take a time machine back there, I'm certain you'd see Doug dancing around as he played like every song was diggy-liggy-low. And Doug is about 15 and Rusty about 13. They leave the continental playboys to make music of their own, singing in English as Rusty and Doug. In Crowley, Louisiana, there's this guy named JD Miller. Most people who've seen that name were looking at who's credited with writing, Kitty Wells, it wasn't God who made honky-tongues angels. Miller has a small building that passes for a recording studio in this place and time. And a little label he's calling Beacher Records. There's a picture of a Rusty and Doug recording session in Miller's studio. Everyone is wearing only underwear because the studio has no air conditioning. It's so hot and so humid in there, they just stripped to record. As far as I can tell, the only Rusty and Doug single to actually be released on Beacher is in 1953. Called, "It's Better to Be A Has Been Than Be A Never Was." "It's better to be a half-advent and to be a never-was." "It's better to have had some love of it and a thrill need the moon above." "No, you're gone, those memories linger on, I never will forget that I was had your love." I think the B side is a lot better. If you don't know the term "blood harmony," then go back and listen to the Louvon Brothers episode of this podcast. It's one of the most downloaded episodes I think you'll like it. At this point in this story, the Louvon Brothers have already perfected their close harmony style, but not very many people have heard it. Rusty and Doug sing in close blood harmony which you can hear on their first B side. No, no. It's not so. "We were a boy and girl in love and I wanted to marry you, now someone new has told your love and I'm left alone so blue." "No, no, it's not so, I've pleaded with you not to go, why try to lie the truth still show and loving my heart still holds." JD Miller is listed as the only writer on the A side and a co-writer on the B side. There's the thing about that. Earlier you heard a little bit of Doug Kershaw doing a song called "Diggy Liggy Low." That song was written by a man called Terry Clement and his brothers. JD Miller is not one of Terry Clement's brothers, but he's listed as the only writer of "Diggy Liggy Low" because, well because when you're dealing with a bunch of swamp kids, you make the rules. At no point in my research for this episode, did I come across Doug Kershaw talking about ever writing any song with JD Miller? When Doug talks about writing, no, no, it's not so. It's sure. Seems like he thinks he wrote that by himself. Maybe JD Miller really was the only writer of Rusty and Doug's first A side, but I've got to wonder if him only having half the writing credit on the B side is why it ended up on the B side. The one book most people use as a source for info on Miller makes big references to royalty disputes. Between Miller and the artist he recorded for feature, while also glossing over the fact that Miller started Reb Rebel Records to release non-satirical, non-ironic, white supremacist records by acts like Johnny Rebel. So I don't think anyone really has any idea what was going on down there in Crowley Louisiana in the early 1950s or who deserves credit for what. In any case, Rusty and Doug's single on feature goes nowhere. But JD Miller has a connection with A Cuff Rose in Nashville and in 1954, A Cuff Rose launches Hickory Records. Kind of like the situation we heard about last week between curb records and RCA, when Miller finds someone he thinks is good enough he records them and sends their stuff up to Hickory. If they like it, that artist records come out on Hickory with better distribution and promotion. And you know, it's pretty weird, but a lot of Rusty and Doug's records for Hickory in that first year or two have JD Miller listed as a writer if not the only writer. Miller has a co-write on their Hickory debut, a song Doug wrote called So Lovely Baby. That's piano player Wiley Barkdoll singing the bass part. With the A Cuff Rose machine behind them, So Lovely Baby goes to number 14 on the country chart. We're in 1955, so Doug's around 19 years old and Rusty's about 17. They've done a bit of touring and playing with other bands. In 1954, Doug was briefly in Pete Drake's Atlanta Georgia band, Sons of the South, which somehow also included Jack Green, Joe South, Jerry Reed and Roger Miller before any of these people were famous. The success of So Lovely Baby, their first hit, leads to Rusty and Doug joining the star-making program The Louisiana Hayride from 1955 to 1957. The legendary guitar player Hank Garland joins their band for a little while. By 1956, Rusty and Doug are appearing on the world's original jamboree out of Wheeling, West Virginia. And in 1957, these young men become members of the Grand Ole Opry. This whole time, their sound is moving around a lot, but they're absolutely nailing everything they try. We already heard one of the close harmony ballads. Around 1956, Rusty and Doug put out this honky-tonk number, which you could maybe even call an early trucking song, "Going Down the Road." "Going Down the Road, I carry it a load of heart rate, 'cause my baby don't love me no more. I'm even for her sake, going down the road, I carry it a load of memory." "And my baby won't share together our treasure eternally." Right there, that's a very mature understanding of song structure. These kids may both still be in their teens at this point, and the music they're composing is top shelf for artists of any age. In 1957, they record the rockabilly-ish "Hame" with Hank Garland on guitar. "Hey, man, hey, man, I want you to come on out and let's play, but please say, okay, I say good day to play, I ask the way to man, I ask the way to stand, he say to son, it's like gonna shine and I say bad, he'll be fine." As you can hear, in the second half of the 1950s, these kids are making it happen. But just like the Louven Brothers, just when everything's getting good, the war screws up everything. Rusty and Doug were made members of the Grand Ole Opry at the tail end of 1957. I can't tell if Doug was actually drafted or knew he would be and decided to enlist. Whatever happened, Rusty signs up with him so they can serve at the same time and get it out of the way. While waiting to ship out, both brothers take whatever session work they can find in Nashville. As Rusty playing guitar on an Osborne Brothers song, there's a woman behind every man. And you can hear Doug on this Billman row recording of Rusty and Doug composition, Sally Joe. His unusual guitar playing is featured in the also quite unusual intro. The Kershaws had recorded more than enough material for Hickory to keep releasing Rusty and Doug singles while they're in the service. But without them around to tour or play the Opry or do anything at all to promote their records, well it's not a good situation. In the spring of 1957, the Everly Brothers had a #2 pop hit with Bye Bye Love. And they stayed hot until 1962. As you can imagine, this entire time there is no shortage of close harmony brother acts ripping off the Everly sound. The popularity of that sound may have helped Rusty and Doug get on the Opry. Even though Doug would later insist the Everly's had copied their style. But when the Kershaws come back in the middle of 1960, it's to a world where Rusty and Doug's vocal style is no longer very special. Doug remembers sitting on the ground at his apartment broke about to be evicted. Quote, "I was just coming out of the army and I was sitting on the stairs writing songs and all of a sudden I thought if I could have anything I wanted right now, what would it be? The first thing that popped into my head was not to be ashamed of being a Cajun. See nobody ever explained that to me when we were growing up. They took our language away. They wouldn't let us speak French." He's talking about what we heard earlier when he started school and had to learn English, but he's also talking about what we heard before that about the word Cajun taking on a derogatory meaning. Since 1921, it was Louisiana law that public education be taught exclusively in the English language. Children who struggled to transition to English from Cajun French were mocked by other students and punished by teachers. Making Cajun French in school could get you beaten with a yardstick or worse. By the 1940s, the decade the Kershaw kids moved into town and started going to school, some Cajun parents had completely stopped teaching and speaking their own language to their children, so they'd have an easier time assimilating. Making kids like Doug and Rusty even more rare, even more singled out for negative attention. Here in 1960, the only way out, Doug can see, is to own his Cajun blood. Be proud of the people and place he came from. Let the world know who and what Doug Kershaw is. Of course I'm telling you the story of how he came to write the song, Louisiana Man. Not as straight of a line from point A to point B as you may expect. Hearing this song, not many people would guess that it's the sound of two boys learning how to accept their own heritage. The pride comes across as fully-formed as if it were always there. When this song comes out in 1961, it's more than just a hit. Their recording of it only goes to number 10 on the country chart, but sales and radio play have it four spots away from the Billboard Hot 100. It's estimated to have been covered over 800 times by everyone, just everyone. John Rich uses it as an excuse to get his fiddle out on a Buckewins album. Of course, Jimmy C Newman crushes it. The killer kills it. George Jones did it with Gene Pitney. Jimmy Gentry takes it in a pretty weird direction. Bob Lumens cover is great. And we can't forget The Gosden Brothers. In 1971, Connie Smith's cover goes to number 14. You get the idea, and Doug gets the royalty checks. There's no telling how many millions of records this song has sold. Of course, a lot of these covers happened after Doug's 1969 appearance on The Johnny Cast Show. But some of them were way before. In fact, it's quite possible that one cause for Doug's slingshot resurgence after the TV show is thousands upon thousands of people realizing he not only wrote a song they know and love, but that the lyrics are about his life. We're still years before that though. The same day, Rusty and Doug record Louisiana Man, they lay down a cover of that Clement Brothers song "Diggy Liggy Low" and their version of the Cajun traditional Jolie Blonde. These guys are clearly all in on getting back to their roots. And long before anyone could know how successful it would be for them to do so. When the hype over their recording of Louisiana Man begins to calm down, they put out Diggie Liggy Low as a single and it goes to number 14. The Kershaw boys are back in the family business. Their final recording session for Hickory gives us Cajun Joe, the bully of the bio. Awesome song, not a hit. In 1962, Rusty and Doug moved to RCA Victor to put out Cajun strippers, sung in Cajun French. Because of the title and the fact that, unless you speak Cajun French, you have no idea what they're singing and whooping and hollering about, it comes off as more than a little dirty. Awesome song, also not a hit. But Rusty and Doug could have toured for decades on Louisiana Man and Diggie Liggy Low alone. Throw in that the live show had to have been incredible and they're probably set for life. Except in 1964, Rusty develops a psychological allergy to just about everything you have to do to keep a career in music going. On an interview done much later, quote, "I just couldn't stand the grind of touring and the same set every night. I like to play from the top of my head. Once you practice and get all the parts stuck together, that's what you've done, you're stuck. It takes a life out of it. To me, it's, oh man, we gotta play this motherfucker again." Rusty and Doug are Splitzville. Rusty goes back to Louisiana, becomes an electrician and unfortunately develops an addiction to uppers and alcohol. The world doesn't hear much from Rusty over the next five years. Doug either, because he takes some time to relax, enjoy the success he's had, and think about what he wants to do next. Music being the only answer this guy would ever end up at, in 1968, he goes to Buddy Killin at Tree Publishing Company and says he's ready to get to work. Buddy Killin is part owner and in-house producer at Tree. At the time he's got a great relationship with Warner Brothers. So he signs Doug to Tree, gets him a deal with Warner's and they begin working on Doug's first solo album. The Cajun way includes re-recordings of Jolly Blonde, Louisiana Man, and if you've ever wondered why some people say it one way, other people say it another, Diggy Ligi Low, is retitled Diggy Diggy Low this time because that's how Doug has always sung it. But the song on this album Doug seems to care the most about is a new one he's written and it's pretty weird. The title is You Fight Your Fight and I'll Fight Me. He starts off by singing about Napoleon trying to conquer the world and that takes you to the chorus. The second verse naturally is about Hitler. He's going pretty far out of his way to make these syllables fit the meter and rhyming game, but the anti-war, fixture-owned problems instead of bothering anyone else message is clear. Then the last verse kicks off with the line, Red Man is Indian, White Man is What? Black Man is Negro, Yellow is Not. I can't imagine this is supposed to mean anything except racism is bad, but I honestly don't know how these words get us there. Anyway, Doug fights for this song to be the first single from the Cajun Way and it does not chart at all. But Johnny Cash has already got on board this train. The Cajun Way's liner notes are written by Cash and he sets up that appearance on his TV show, launching Doug Kershaw into the mainstream as a solo artist, regardless of the weird first single he chose from his album. The next single is Diggy Diggy Low, followed by Orange Blossom Special. You know, fiddle stuff. Giving the people what they want and getting all the things we already talked about in return. In the middle of 1970, Rusty Kershaw comes out of nowhere with an amazing solo album. For some reason, his liner notes are written by a well-known preacher named Bill De Campbell and written terribly, but it's a rare source of information on Rusty's life. He recaps the success Rusty had as a duo with Doug, then tells us just how bad of an alcoholic Rusty has become since that time. We're talking two-fifths of Whiskey a day, plus all the amphetamines it takes to stay conscious long enough to drink that. He doesn't go into details, but Rusty messed around and did something that got him put in jail for two weeks, then sent a rehab and now he's back. I'd even go further than to say Rusty is back. He's better than ever. The album is called Cajun in the Blues Country, which is a clever way of telling you three of the genres combined on the album. I would throw funk in there too. I don't want to build it up too much, but if you like the clips I'm about to play, you've got to check it out. First of all, there's the session musician, Weldon Myrick on Pedal Steel, Gary Scruggs on Harmonica, Bob Wilson on piano, Carl Himmel on drums, Tim Drummond on bass, Charlie Daniels on guitar, and naturally Big Brother Doug is there to play fiddle and be his producer. Rusty isn't listed with these guys for doing anything. There's a picture on the back of him holding on acoustic guitar. I'd be surprised if he didn't play an instrument or two somewhere on the album. But it's his voice we're here to talk about, because wow. On the intro to this day and time, he sounds like Nina Simone. This day and time, this day and time, of long hands shut down, this day and time, of long hands. Then there's the country boy, which seems at least semi-autobiographical. It's the usual story of a country boy going to the big city and getting his head spun around by everything. When he realizes he's got his own way of doing things, the entire song changes and Rusty gives his full throat to the chorus. So excited, much more thrilling, what a proven new thing he has found. And the parties that would play hold money around, the big crowd and the parties that would play a whole money around. And this is a very good album, but it did not sell very well. Which would be tragic. Except if it had and Rusty Kershaw had become a superstar on his own, then he likely wouldn't have been available to make what I and many other people consider to be the greatest of all Neil Young's albums. Before we get into this, I want to read you the liner notes Rusty Kershaw wrote for on the beach. Because these liner notes are for sure the first experience I ever had with Rusty Kershaw, and that's probably also true for a lot of people listening to this. One whole side of the album sleeve is I assume a reproduction of Rusty's handwritten cursive. You imagine the spelling errors, I'll try to put emphasis on words that are randomly capitalized and I'll pause for the strange punctuation choices. I can't read or write very well, so I don't quite understand why anyone would want me to write liner notes. Except for what I saw and heard. The first time I saw Neil, his spirit was down. The next time I saw Neil, I tried to boost his spirits with my music, and I did, and it worked. In return, Neil played, sang, and wrote the best of any music in a while. Not to speak of the fun we had. We laughed so hard we all had bruised ribs. On revolution blues, I turned into a python, then an alligator, crawling like one, making noises like one, plus I was eating up the carpet and mic stands and such. And in the meanwhile, I started to crawl up towards Neil, which is pretty spooky when you're trying to sing. But anyways, by that time the necktie people asked my friend, "Jo, what are we gonna do about Rusty?" My friend's answer was, "Hell, I don't know, I'm just hanging around a sea if he'll swallow him or not." But what the hell, I give you my word, there is good music in this album. Rusty Kershaw, R.K., 'cause Ben is my friend. These are truly bizarre liner notes, right? The wildest part is they're all about to make perfect sense. Now I'm gonna do that thing some of you hate. If you've never heard on the beach, if you're even slightly curious about it, and you can stand to delay hearing the rest of this story. I would recommend listening to it before finishing this episode, and I would recommend being in whatever frame of mind is suggested to you by the cover of the album. On the beach is not one of those things where you have to know the story of how it was made to appreciate it. Not having any frame of reference for what you're hearing may even be a huge part of the magic, I really don't know. It became my favorite Neil Young album the first time I heard it, and it has been my favorite since that day. I didn't know any of the things I'm about to say, maybe you'll love it too, maybe you'll hate it. Either way, I suspect the story of how it came into being will make perfect sense to you. Okay, if you don't know anything about Neil Young, here's what you need to know. He was in a very good and successful rock band called Buffalo Springfield. They broke up and he pursued a solo career, while also joining another great and successful rock band called Crazy Horse. Come on, baby, let's go downtown, let's go, let's go, let's go downtown, walk on, talk on, and baby, tell the lies, don't you be caught with a tear in your eye, show not there be selling stuff for when the movie gets to rise, there's a band when you're dealing with the man and the light shines in your eyes. While also working with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, as Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, blue blue windows behind the stars, yeah, I'm on the ride, big birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes, neighbor, helpless, helpless, helpless. In other words, Neil Young is a really big deal. In just a second, he's going to become the biggest deal. 1971. Neil is in Nashville, Tennessee, to perform on the Johnny Cash Show. These young minds will be our leaders in the future, they'll be our science, our arts, our crafts, our politics, our music. And now our music comes from such a brilliant minds, instead of singer songwriter Neil Young. A lot of great artists get affected by that, a lot of great art goes down the drain. I got you knocking at my cellar door, I love you, baby, can I have some more? I hit the city and I lost my band, I watched the needle take another man, gone, gone the damage done. While here he meets a local music producer who's recently opened up his own studio, and funny thing, Neil happens to have already heard and loved the sound of some music recorded in this studio. He's been planning for a while to do a live acoustic album, but after this serendipitous meeting he decides he wants to try recording in this studio. And he wants to do it right now, tonight. This producer scrambles to get musicians in there for the session, which it's Nashville so not really an issue. The short notice pedal steel player ends up being Ben Keith. You've heard Ben on Patsy Client, I Fall to Pieces. And you've heard him on Neil Young's Harvest, because that's the album they're about to start making in this studio. Neil Young is famous for making whatever kind of music he wants to make, and not really caring what anyone expects from him. With Harvest, which I would not call straight up country music, but is certainly country influenced. He accidentally makes 1972's best selling album in the United States. So Neil Young is now the biggest name in American music, and he has to go tour his ass off. During rehearsals for one tour he calls on the other guitarist from that band Crazy Horse to come help out. Neil is super close with this guy. His name is Danny Witten. He's a heroin addict and he shows up in very bad shape. Neil tells Danny who cannot play guitar in his condition to just go back to LA and try to get it together. Later that night, Neil gets a phone call that Danny has died. In an interview from 1975, Neil says, "That blew my mind, fucking blew my mind." I loved Danny, I felt responsible and from there I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and insecure. You can hear exactly what he's talking about because there's a live album from the tour called Time Fades Away. It was finally issued on CD in 2017, having been out of print since the initial 1973 vinyl pressing. Well, you heard about the great pretend I went to see a man is not the same, down by the club on the parking lot center. I was to meet him in play this game. Neil Young calls it the worst album he's ever made. But Time Fades Away was only released in 1973 because the album he turned in as a follow-up to harvest was tonight's the night. Whether a person loved this album or hates it, they would have to agree that it's a total shit show. That is the sound of a devastated human being barely hanging on to reality. So tonight's the night gets put on a shelf. Time Fades Away approximately 50% as much of a shit show is released instead and Neil begins working on his next album. Two of the songs from on the beach walk on and for the turn styles are recorded with one of Neil's usual producers David Briggs. After doing those two songs, David gets really sick and the rest of this album has to happen without him. Other producers are brought in and Ben Keith, that petal steel player, tries to help out by bringing in Leavon Helm and Rick Danko, the drummer and bass player from The Band. Ben also for some unknown and magical reason brings in Rusty Kershaw, whom he'd met back in Nashville sometime around 1956. This crew takes over Sunset Sound Studio and moves into rooms at the Sunset Marquis Hotel down the street. They only go to the studio to record when inspiration strikes. The rest of the time they're just hanging out at this hotel. The list of people stopping by to party at one location or the other is long, including Playboy Bunnies, one of the Everly Brothers and the most famous porn star in the world, Linda Lovelace. Again we're in 1974. It's about four years after Rusty's solo album and if he was sober when he made that, friends, he is no longer. 1970 Rusty was a clean shaven man with a short pop-a-door. 1974 Rusty is pretty fat with long, straggly hair and a full swamp beard to match. Tim Drummond, the bassist from Rusty's 1970 album and harvest is here for the on-the-beach sessions. He remembers seeing cases of wine and boxes of fritos being delivered to Rusty's room. Rusty's wife Julie comes along for the trip and she's got this recipe for a little treat called "Honey Slides". Here's Neil Young giving instructions for how to make "Honey Slides". That's just, you know, real fluid, great, where I want it, where is he going to get on the street now? Can you take it? Just get your ladies, you know, you've got one. Get her cooked up on a stove, you know. Put that grass in the grinder, you know. Get her real fine, put it in the frying pan, put it on a stove, turn her heat up a little. My boy's grass just starts to smoke. Just a little bit. Take it off the heat. You want a party of two months. Many take the honey, you know. Get a half to pass on honey about this big. I hope you ladies are listening to "Honey Right Up" so it's slippery, you know. It takes that grass with, you know, to take that fine grass that you've cooked up, you know, just thought it was starting to smoke and you took it off. You mix those together and you have the spoon, you know, and then you. I think you should eat it after that, you know. Just eat it after that. Just eat a little while, you know, maybe a spoonful or two. But give me surprise, you know, just makes me feel fine. So the inside scoop with "On the Beach" is even if you don't see his name listed as playing something on a particular song, even if he's not listed as a producer of anything. Rusty Kershaw is all over everything except those first two songs, because he has everyone bombed on honey slides the entire time they're making this album. Julie Kershaw is cooking this stuff up by the pound. Ben Keith says, "20 minutes after eating a honey slide, you start forgetting where you are." Which, remember, is the very thing Neil Young wants to do at this exact point in his life. Elliot Roberts, Neil's manager, says, "People passed out. The stuff was like much worse than heroin, much heavier. Rusty would pour it down your throat and within 10 minutes you were catatonic." If you haven't figured out where this is headed, these sessions go way off the rails. Musicians are switched over to instruments they barely know how to play. The shortest song to come out of this is four minutes and four seconds long. The longest and arguably best song is nearly nine minutes. Keep in mind, everyone may be losing their shit on honey slides. But for Rusty Kershaw, this is just Monday, or whoever even cares what day it is, man. He's used to this, and as a result, in much better condition than anyone else to take creative control. And that is exactly what he does. If you think I'm playing this up to tell a good story, Neil Young's own rowdy Willie Hines once said on the beach is Rusty Kershaw's album, not Neil Young's. So first off, Rusty has no appreciation for the clean look of a professional LA recording studio. Right away, they send out for a bunch of old furniture to put in the live room. Neil Young must have really liked this idea, because bringing used furniture into recording sessions becomes tradition for him from here on out. A quote from Rusty, "I said shit, this is too spiffy. We gotta get this like your living room, man, sitting real close together. Like we're at home. Either that or let's put on some suits." They get a bunch of easy chairs and lamps, but they mostly leave the lamps off and use candles for lighting. Once the pod and cigarette smoke gets going, nobody in the control room can even see the musicians in the live room. The musicians can barely see themselves or whatever they're supposed to be doing. Microphones are constantly being knocked away from the source of whatever sound they're meant to record. Rusty doesn't play anything on the song "Revolution Blues," but he's very responsible for the way it sounds, not just because of honey slides. The song is about some killer hippie, Manson family type shit, and Rusty doesn't think anyone's playing it like they mean it. Here's his version of the story. I said, "Look, man, you don't sound like you're trying to start a fucking revolution. Here's how you start that, and I just started breaking a bunch of shit and Ben jumped right in there." I said, "That's a revolution, motherfucker. Goddamn, that's part can you write off. He got it on the next take." The next take he's talking about is when Rusty slithers around on the floor like a snake and all that other stuff from the liner notes. I feel like there's something wrong. I got the revolution blues. I see bloody mountains and 10 million dude boggies coming down the mountain. Well, I hear the Laurel Canyon. It's full of famous stars, but I hate them worse than rappers, and I'll kill them in their car. David Crosby plays rhythm guitar on the song, and Graham Nash is there too. Rusty has both of them freaked way the fuck out. There's one story that may or may not be total bullshit about Rusty pulling a knife on Steven Still for trying to take an acoustic guitar out of his hands. According to Julie Kershaw, Rusty goes six weeks without a real night's sleep. The carpet in his hotel room gets all kinds of red wine stains and cigarette burns from Rusty nodding off. He finally passes out for real one day, after using his pocket knife to stab a note into the outside of his hotel room door. The note just says DON'T. As for the parts Rusty actually plays on the album, he's got his own ideas about how that should go down too. For one thing, he refuses to practice any song ahead of time. Next, he insists on being as physically close to Neil as possible while recording. A quote from Neil, "Rusty's onto that thing. He wants to get that moment. Just sit down and I'll start then you start going and we'll get it." Some people once they discover that, they're so into it that it's all encompassing. Nothing else matters. Rusty's one of them. I was two at one point. He's a cool cat. Rusty's fine. He's wild, boy. Rusty's explanation. I said Neil, when it'll move me the most is the first time you play it. You're gonna do it your very best then. And I can play it with you the first time. We only have to sit real close together. Neil said to me later, "How on the hell do you know how to play this thing the first time I play it? You don't know what I'm gonna do." I said Neil, "You carry a heavy vibe and if I'm sitting close to you, I can feel what you feel before you play. I know where you're gonna go." With how much control he has over everything and people even going so far as to say it's really a Rusty Kershaw album, it may come as a surprise that he only plays on two songs. They are the final two songs on the album, Motion Pictures and Ambulance Blues. Rusty remembers how motion pictures came together. Me and Ben and Neil were sitting in Ben's room. Neil started humming something and I started playing along with the melody on the steel. Ben started playing bass, it sounded so goddamn pretty. Neil picked up a pen and just wrote the words right then. They went down to the studio and, quote, "Put that motherfucker down while it was still smeared all over us." I'd rather start all over again. In the album sleeve, Motion Pictures has four carry written in parentheses next to it. That's Neil's wife at the time, the actress Carrie Snotgris, whom we heard Neil falling in love with in a man needs a maid on harvest. While I go somewhere, I don't know when. I was watching a movie with a friend. I fell in love with the actress. She was playing a part that I could understand. Motion Pictures seems to be Neil's promise to somehow pull himself out of this crippling depression and make the relationship work again. All those headlines they just bore me now. I'm deep inside myself but I'll get out somehow and I'll stand before you and I'll bring a smile. To your eyes. They divorced soon after this album came out. Neil Young says on the beach is probably one of the most depressing albums he's ever made. But he also says, "Good album, one side of it particularly. The side with ambulance blues, motion pictures, and on the beach. ambulance blues, it's out there, it's a great take." Several critics have called this the single best song Neil Young has ever written or recorded. That's Rusty's fiddle. They tore you down and plow you on. You're only real with your make up on. How could I see you and stay too long? Someone could write an entire book about the song ambulance blues. I would be surprised if nobody ever does. The possible meanings, the historical and cultural references are seemingly endless. If I had to give one meaning to it, I guess I'd say it's about how attractive nostalgia for the past becomes when the present keeps taking itself away from you. The past is way again. Old mother use. She's on the skills. She ain't happy. Neither are the kids. She needs someone that she can scream at. It feels like entering another person's dream to witness them giving themselves an exorcism. I guess I'll call it sickness gone. It's hard to say the meaning of this song. An ambulance can only go so fast. It's easy to get buried in the past. When you try to make a good thing last. After they get everything they can get out of the sunset strip scene, Neil takes Rusty and a few others out to his ranch for some more recording. But these sessions are cut short. When Word comes in, that Carrie Stodgris is headed home after being gone for a while. Neil kicks everyone off the property so he can have privacy to try and save his marriage. After a couple of months playing Ringleader for this circus, Rusty Kershaw is out of the picture. At least until about 20 years later, in 1992, when he decides to make another solo album and ask Ben and Neil to play on it. This is as Neil is in the middle of making harvest moon at his ranch, so he invites Rusty to bring his tapes out and record there. Now it's Neil's turn to refuse to learn any songs and go for that natural first take. Rusty's album is called Now and Then. His vocals have shifted into Leon Russell territory. And I'd expect most fans of On the Beach to enjoy it. Some people say future song almost feels like a sequel to ambulance blues. You just can't hold into the future. We're lost I can not hold your hands with you. So take what you want and leave what you don't. Nothing is lonely and forever to me. Rusty Kershaw died of a heart attack in 2001, two days after playing his last show. We left Doug Kershaw back in 1974, still writing that second wave he caught on the Johnny Cash Show. He kept it going for a while, but Rusty wasn't the only Kershaw with the taste for drugs and alcohol. Buddy Killin produced Doug's albums for nine more years after that first one. In his autobiography, Buddy calls Doug the most difficult artist he ever worked with. Now the thing about Buddy is he writes about smoking pot like it's mainlining heroin. He doesn't go into much detail, but weed may have been all Doug was messing with in the beginning. And yeah, Doug sounds like a pain in the ass in the studio, thinking he's enough of a big shot to show up late. Not listen to anyone, keep engineers there too long, annoying, but not that crazy. And he wouldn't even necessarily have to be stoned to do any of that stuff. There are T totalers who did every bit of that. Honestly, I've got to ask if Buddy Killin should ever have been producing Doug Kershaw in the first place. The albums are good, through the 70s even into the 80s and they sell well enough too. But Buddy Killin is a slick Nashville guy and Doug Kershaw is very much not that. Take one of his best albums from the 70s Devil's Elbow. It's great, but I can't help but wonder how it would sound if Buddy wasn't treating Doug like some Nashville singer. I mean, he literally uses the Jordan airs on it. This ain't loving from my lady, it's about to drive me crazy. She was the sweetest piece to heaven I've ever known. And she just caught the Jamestown Fairy. It's not a hot day in January, like she said it'd be. If she'd ever left me, a case of gun was all she carried. As she got on the Jamestown Fairy, and she said that gun was all she'd ever need. She just caught the Jamestown Fairy. If she'd ever left me, go back a couple albums before this, and you're at Doug Kershaw's self-titled from 1971. I like the song Mama Said Yeah. It's funky, it's Doug Kershaw. Mama was sleeping over the hot stove, and Papa was a man in a contact. I was a hot and a bun, but I did not go to the hot patch. Papa said, "Son, you can't hide forever of the under the bed." But then, Jordan Ayers. And this is what Mama said. You gotta reach out and get what you gotta get. And keep what you got no matter what. Don't take more than you really need. And you'll get along just fine with this old wolf. Ain't that right, baby? Buddy Killin was incredibly talented at what he did. What Doug Kershaw does just happens to be a different thing. As his relationship with drugs moves over to uppers, his behavior in the studio grows more erratic, his working relationship with Buddy worsens until Buddy eventually quits. Todd Rungren has a story about meeting Doug around this time. It's another one that sounds to me like Doug Kershaw just being Doug. He could have been 100% sober when this happened, but here you go, make up your own mind. Todd Rungren is responding to a question about his relationship with Ringo's star. He says their first time working together was, quote, "A Jerry Lewis telethon in the late 70s in Las Vegas." Ringo was still something of a drinker at the time I didn't really notice. He seemed to be in pleasant spirits. Jerry brought in this fiddle player named Doug Kershaw and made us play behind him, and he started playing Jambalaya and wouldn't stop. I got up on one of the drum risers and started directing, and we just started playing the song faster and faster until the fiddle player couldn't keep up anymore. That's the way we made him stop, end quote. In 1978, the Rolling Stones asked Doug to open a show in Dallas. They end up calling him back to the dressing room before the show to jam on faraway eyes. You can see and hear Doug joining them for that song on the live DVD and album of this concert. It's not Doug's fault, but it's one of the worst things I've ever heard, so I'm not going to play any of it. Also, in 1978, Doug Kershaw has a bit part in Terence Malik's Days of Heaven. You can spot him in the campfire scene with a bowler hat and some amazing facial hair. In 1981, he moved to the Scotty Brothers label for his album, Instant Hero. The album cover is hilarious. Doug's basically wearing a Superman costume and he doesn't look too sure about it. As goofy as the cover is, the album gives him the biggest single of his solo career. A song nobody would ever have expected from Doug Kershaw, Hello Woman. It goes #29 Country, which yes, is his biggest solo hit in America. Something else from 1981 is for some reason. The dukes of Hazard TV show Soundtrack album has Doug Kershaw all over it. Unless you count the Hazard County Boys backing band, Doug has more songs than anyone else on the soundtrack. I'm guessing this happened because John Schneider, aka Bowdook, also has a record deal with Scotty Brothers and the soundtrack is on that label. If this is after Doug's hit with Hello Woman, then the label would want to use him as much as they can. Not gonna lie, the soundtrack is pretty good. The album cover is a song that has a record deal with the band, Doug has more songs than anyone else on the soundtrack. Doug has more songs than anyone else on the soundtrack. In 1984, Doug found sobriety. When asked about it, he once said, "I'm more consistent now. I don't create as much as I used to, but I'd rather not create if that's what it's going to take. It wasn't fun anymore. I'm a lot more focused now. I know what I'm doing. I'm paying attention. It may not be as good of a show, but I'm playing better than ever before." As is so often the case, we can safely assume Doug's substance abuse was part of a battle with depression. Tanya Tucker has a book called "100 Ways to Beat the Blues," where she got a bunch of different people to relate their experiences with depression. Here's part of Doug's section. When I feel a sadness come upon me, and it still does at times when I'm not paying attention, I'll take my fiddle out and close my eyes. Then, I just go back in my mind and let the music flow. I think of Mama Rita playing her guitar and singing "Jolly Blonde," or "Daddy Jacks" during the going outboat with his feet so he could save his hands to play the accordion. When I do this, when I slip back in time to recapture those good, if-fleeting childhood moments, the sounds and colors of all those vedotos. I feel like, how should I say it? Light. Yeah, that's it. I feel light. My mind drifts upward, almost leaving my physical body behind. For a second there, it's as if I've never been judged or criticized or hurt. It's as if I could never do anything wrong. I feel love is what I feel. Then it's over, and I'm gone from that old time and place. I'm back in the now time. I don't dwell on the past, I just plug into it from time to time, out of respect for those loved ones who are now gone. And I think that's the secret. If I were to linger, the blues would hit me like a truck doing 90 miles an hour. So, my advice is this. Learn to play the damn fiddle. This heart of mine keeps hearing, while the love within keeps burning. I pray you'll be returning. But what good will it do? Why, crap for you, dear, I know you won't be true. I always feel so blue, dear, so what else can I know? As of the night I'm recording this, Doug Kershaw is still performing. Go see him. And I hope that you do. Every episode I ask listeners to share what they just heard with one person in their lives. A friend, a co-worker, someone you meet at a party, who seems like they might be interested. This week, that mission is going to be very easy. All you have to do is find a Neil Young fan. There's a good chance they either don't know much about how on the beach was made, or don't know all this other stuff about Rusty Kershaw and his brother Doug. Next week on the podcast, it's the final regular episode of the first season, and I'm going to be talking about Ralph Mooney. That's a name too few people know, and it's been my experience that most of the people who do know it don't even know all the reasons they should know it. So it's going to be another episode with a ton of fantastic music in it, and I hope you'll love it. Okay, I've talked about my personal connection to a few episodes, and everyone seems to like it a lot when I do that. So I'm going to do that again in these liner notes, but it may take a while. Because whether or not it means anything of consequence, or it's merely some kink in human perception of causality, I think coincidence is one of the most interesting things in life, and for me, it's off the charts here. I can't remember if the first instrument I wanted to play as a child was drums or fiddle. We're talking six or seven years old. I never got good at either. In fact, I never even got a drum kid. But I did get a fiddle, and I took some lessons, played at a school, recital, all that stuff. I still have that fiddle, mostly because Doug Kershaw scratched his name into it for me. I don't know why. It's not something I would have asked him to do, unless an adult told me to ask. But he did it, and that was nice of him, and I would surely have also been enamored with his playing and performing style. So I've always liked Doug Kershaw. Not that I've always listened to Malad and own every album or anything, but you know, the idea of Doug Kershaw. Like the idea of that person who you think of as your best friend, even though you haven't talked to them in five years, like that. So when you grow up and then become as obsessed with movies, as you are music, and you're going through the Terence Malik films, and Doug Kershaw pops up in Days of Heaven, it feels like seeing that best friend. When you later become obsessed with this weird folk song about swimming, to the point that you put it on repeat for hours at a time while you're doing other things. Only to realize nearly a decade later that the Cajun Yel you always assumed was loud and way in right the third is actually Doug Kershaw. That one's a little weird, but also cool. Then in 2003, on the beach was issued on CD, having been out of print since the vinyl release similar to Time Fades Away. I used to go to music stores and buy albums based on nothing but the cover. My thinking was, hey, if the people who made this music think this album cover is cool, and I also think it's cool, well, we've already got that in common, so maybe the music's good. There was a display for on the beach, I like the cover, I bought it, and it immediately blew my mind. There isn't another album in the world that sounds this way, and you know, considering the fact it's a miracle they didn't burn the recording studio down making it, there's a great reason for that. And by the way, I know some Neil Young fans want to argue with me about which one of his albums is more of a shit show. Listen, I don't care. That's not a conversation, it's interesting to me. Time Fades Away wasn't shelved. On the beach wasn't shelved. Tonight's the night was shelved. I didn't write that story, I'm just telling it. But like I said, I didn't know anything about it when I first heard on the beach. It was just the music that got me. The liner notes, I probably read a couple times, tried to make sense of them, you know, couldn't, and then forgot about. Definitely didn't even think twice about the last name Kershaw, and never thought to look into it, because the rest of the album packaging gives no indication of how important Rusty was to it. He only plays on two songs, they had him write the liner notes, whatever. It was only when reading Shakey, Jimmy McDonald's biography of Neil Young, that all of this came together for me. It's an incredible book. If every famous musician had a book like this written about them, then reading those books would be everyone's favorite hobby, and there would be no reason for this podcast to exist. There's a pretty crazy story here too. Neil Young is big on documenting everything in his life, so he brings Jimmy on board to write his authorized biography, which takes about eight years of interviews with Neil and everyone who'd been around him. Then Neil Young decides he doesn't want the book published, and Jimmy has to sue to get it published. So I think you should read Shakey as soon as you can. It covers everything from the beginning nearly up until the year 2000. Most of the making of on the beach stuff came from there. The interviews Jimmy did with Rusty Kershaw are amazing. In answering one question, Rusty mentions how he used to be in a country music act with his brother, Doug, and a 10,000 watt light bulb goes off in my head. All of these things, everything I've been talking to you about, become 100 times more interesting, and pretty soon I'm consumed with discovering as much as I can about, well, all of the things I told you in the episode, and even more personal connections that I have to this story. There were over 50 clips of songs in this episode, and when I started mixing it, I had close to 80 that I wanted to use. So if you enjoyed any of this music, then I would encourage you to get out there and dig around because there's so much more greatness waiting to be heard. I didn't want to use a lot of live audio, because for reasons that I discussed in the episode, a lot of it is annoying to listen to without having the visual for context. But I'm going to put a few of my favorite Doug Kershaw video clips in the blog post. If you don't go watch them, then you seriously may as well have not listened to this episode because you will never get it. I'll have the days of having clip on there. Doug is also in a 1971 movie called Zachariah, which I'll have up. And an interesting connection there is that Jimmy Haskell from the Bobby Gentry episode did the score for Zachariah. In researching the episode, I came across an old Kurt Vile interview from nearly 10 years ago, where he talks about how much his father played Rusty and Doug's music when he was little. Kurt also says that his own favorite artist biography may be shaky, so it's possible Kurt isn't a somewhat similar boat with me on this one. One thing about Danny Witton's overdose, it wasn't heroin, and it may have been an accident. He took value for arthritis in his knee, and he was drinking a lot to try and kick heroin. That's a classic recipe for an accidental overdose. It may have been a suicidal overdose, but it wasn't with heroin. While we're talking about drugs, I could see some people here in 2018 thinking all these stories about honey slides must be full of exaggeration. These guys were all stoner musicians already, and they must have had a high tolerance, etc. Well, for one thing, smoking pot and eating it are two extremely different experiences. The other important fact to remember is that this is in the middle of the 1970s. Hell, we're in 2018 right now, and my friend told me a horror story about overdoing it on legal edibles in California last week, so yeah, I think it's safe to say these guys were all tripping their faces off. The Steven Still's story is that Rusty and Neil are playing together. It's starting to sound good, and stills must think he's got an idea for something Rusty should be doing with his part. Because he goes to take the guitar away from Rusty without asking, and Rusty freaks out, pulls a knife on him, etc. Rusty says Neil was telling him to go ahead and do it. Neil doesn't remember this happening at all, so I have no idea if it did happen or not. Some of you may have heard rumors about Rusty Kershaw doing animal sacrifices in his hotel room. I don't believe this happened. It would not surprise me to learn that Rusty started the rumors himself just to mess with people, but it's easy to see how they could have started on their own. Ben Keith Lawyer did have to get Ben and Rusty out of some trouble for destroying a hotel room. Standard. Rusty's otherness in being Cajun also comes into play, then you've got Rusty's particular brand of humor. He's got a story about a groupie he was with one time who told him all about some sexual encounters she had with a monkey. Whether or not it's true, Rusty thinks that story is great. Throw in the rest of his behavior, the knife in the hotel room door, the honey slide filter over everything, and boom, animal sacrifice rumors. This is a good place to jump into the Cajun stuff. I think many people don't realize it because, oh, we love the food and the music. But even today, the word Cajun can be used in a derogatory way and can come with a stigma attached to it. To say it as plainly as possible, they are a product of ethnic cleansing. Cajuns descend from a displaced people. Doug Kershaw remembers needing to use the bathroom when he was a little boy in segregated Louisiana. The bathrooms were labeled white and colored. Doug didn't know which one he was supposed to use. I don't know how I could ever begin to understand that or relate to that. But one thing that always bothers me is when the issue of race in country music finds its way into the mainstream news cycle for, you know, two days before everyone goes back to not being a sudden expert on the topic. First, they act like it's only white people and black people who ever made country music. And second, most of them act like Charlie Pride is the only black person who was ever embraced by country music. Half of these articles spell Charlie Pride's name wrong, which should be a pretty good indicator of what we're dealing with here. Yes, it would be ridiculous to pretend that there has not been racism and whitewashing in country music. Just as it is ridiculous to pretend there has not been racism and whitewashing in every genre of music that is popular in America. Just as it is ridiculous that every piece like this fails to acknowledge the Mexican artist, American Indian artist, every black artist whose name isn't Charlie, Cajun artist, and artist from every other culture who did and do play a role in this music. When these journalists do this, they're committing the exact crime of omission that they're accusing country music of committing. This is a topic I broached last week with the Juds because it tied into another false narrative about authenticity and because I knew I'd be talking about Cajuns and country music today. These are enormous conversations. They are difficult conversations, but they are historical conversations and I intend to continue instigating them. Speaking of recognizing other cultures and their contributions to country music, Doug Kershaw's rerecording of Diggy Liggy Low went to number one in Canada where country music has always been huge. There are too many online articles and interviews to get into here. I'll have links on the website to everything, but I did want to mention one website in particular, which is earlycageinmusic.blogspot.com. Whoever made that website is awesome. That's how I was able to build the partial timeline of the melody that ended up in Jumbalaya by Hank Williams. I could see some people wondering how I can defend Buck Owens business practices and then talk about how JD Miller took credit for the work of the artist he recorded. I could see some people wondering how I can say Oki from Ascogee was satire or Shelby Singleton's pro-segregation records were just a cash grab and then call JD Miller's rep rebel a white supremacist record label without allowing for these motives to enter into it. Well, these are very clearly different things and there should be no confusion of them as equal. There's a world of difference between Buck Owens entering into standard negotiations with professional songwriters to receive a percentage of publishing on their songs when he records them and JD Miller putting himself down as the writer of songs that were really written by a bunch of kids who don't know the first thing about the music business and English isn't even their first language. Most of my information on JD Miller came from the book South to Louisiana by John Brovin, which has a lot of great information in it but really does let Miller present a highly sanitized version of what he was doing with rep rebel records. It's not possible to have the full discussion that needs to be had without saying a word that nobody listening to this signed up to hear when they press play on this episode. So I can't get all the way into it here, but suffice to say the author of this book didn't make Miller get into it either. Letting him speak only about the least inflammatory of the material he produced and letting him present his segregationist philosophy as if that represented the beliefs of most white and black people in Louisiana pretty much uncontested. There's even a story here from an artist named Happy Fath that has to be total bullshit about a van load of black people flagging him down on the road to buy 15 copies of his pro segregation song because according to him the black people of Louisiana like things segregated and wanted it to stay that way. JD Miller speaking out about being pro segregation means there's no possibility of these songs being viewed as satire or a cash grab, but also the pro segregation material is hardly the beginning of the problem here. I don't see how I could ever bring myself to play one second of a Johnny Rebels song on this podcast, but if I did, then you would immediately understand how much of a difference there is between a satirical song about racism or even a sincerely pro segregation song and what I would call a hate crime in the form of a song. Again, it's not something that can be completely unpacked right here and right now, but I have a deeply personal loathing for these recordings. The other book on the music of this area, Swamp Pop by Shane Kay Bernard, doesn't even mention the fact that Miller started Rebels, but it does at least call him out for not being the real writer of Diggy Ligi Low. And listen, my criticisms of these books are only that they do what everyone in the music establishment of every genre always does, which is ignore the parts of the past that are uncomfortable to talk about. The resource I use for every episode of this podcast is the Encyclopedia of Country Music, compiled by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame. JD Miller has an entry in this Encyclopedia that entry praises his achievements as a producer and songwriter, making no mention of Rebels Records at all, no mention of his pro segregation records at all, not even by referring to them with the common euphemism of political material. Nothing new here. All right, moving on. Because this kind of thing is important to some people, I should specify that the first Kershaw in America came from England to New York and then to Louisiana. So he may not be considered Cajun in the strictest sense of the term, but his offspring did marry into Akkadian bloodlines. 100 years later, Jack Kershaw's brother LJ remembers in the winter how they'd stand by the by you waiting for their dad to come home with the day's trappings, help him skin and stretch the first to dry so buyers could come in bid on them. In the summer, they'd fish, take their catch to Lake Arthur by boat and sell it to the fish market. Their father built boats from Cypress trees. These are the kinds of things Jack Kershaw grew up doing and continued to do to support his family when Doug and Rusty were little. I expect to get emails about Dr. John being more famous than Doug Kershaw. That may be true. I wouldn't know how to begin measuring it. But I have never seen Dr. John claim to be Cajun. I've seen people assume Dr. John is a Cajun musician because he is so strongly associated with New Orleans. And I've seen Dr. John let people assume what they want to assume. I've seen an interview where a man assumes Dr. John's birth name is Akkadian and asks where his family is from. The good doctor replies with a region of France and then says that his family had been in New Orleans since the early 1800s. Seems like he'd mention Akkadia since that was a part of the direct question and neither France nor New Orleans were a part of the direct question. He does not mention Akkadia or say the word Cajun. He says New Orleans not a swamp outside New Orleans and he says the family owned a grocery store. As I've said multiple times I'm not an expert but I'm going with not Cajun on this one. There is no question of there being Cajun artist in country music like Jimmy C Newman who were much more successful within country music and consistently performing much better on country charts and radio. There is also no question of that paling in comparison to the type of presence Doug Kershaw has had in the world of pop and rock music. For example you would never see Jimmy C Newman on Midnight Special. I said Doug Kershaw has a reputation for exaggeration so let's see. He's always said that he could play 29 instruments which very well could be true but how about his claim that he'd written 19,000 songs by the year 1971 when he would have been in his 30s. On a related note it was pretty difficult to build a timeline of these events through the 1940s and 1950s. Different sources have different statements from Doug about what year things happened in or how old he was and drugs don't help a person's memory so I may not have an age or a year exactly right here and there but it's all close. Alright I'll end by talking a bit more about Blood Harmony. That's not a scientific term. It's not like I'm an expert or an authority on what is or isn't Blood Harmony. There isn't even an agreed upon set of qualities that Harmony singing must have to qualify as Blood Harmony. For me it's just when it's better than any Harmony singing has any right to be. It's when it's so good that it kind of freaks you out. And it's when you may have listened to a song 150 times yet still catch yourself trying to figure out which person is singing which part. Okay I hope you're ready for some incredible country music history next week because I sure am Ralph Mooney. See you there. [Music]
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Cajuns are descendants of Acadian exiles who were forcibly removed from eastern Canada by the British in the 1700s and later settled in Louisiana.
The Acadian expulsion involved violence, family separation, and hardship, with many dying during relocation.
In Louisiana, Acadians (later called Cajuns) were granted land and autonomy by Spanish authorities, preserving their language and traditions.
Cajun culture evolved by blending Acadian traditions with influences from Spanish, Native American, African, and other cultures, including music and language.
The term "Cajun" originated from English mispronunciation of "Acadian" and later carried derogatory connotations, leading some to identify as Creole.
Cajun music, exemplified by figures like Doug Kershaw, incorporated instruments like the accordion and fiddle, adapting and influencing genres like country and swing.
Summary:
The term "Cajun" refers to the descendants of Acadian people who were expelled from eastern Canada by the British in the mid-1700s. After enduring a traumatic relocation marked by violence and loss, many Acadians eventually settled in Spanish-controlled Louisiana, where they were given land and freedom to maintain their language and Catholic faith. Over time, their culture adapted, blending Acadian traditions with elements from Native American, Spanish, African, and other influences.
The word "Cajun" itself emerged from English speakers' adaptation of "Acadian," though it later took on pejorative meanings, prompting some to identify as Creole instead. Cajun culture thrived through resilience and inclusivity, notably in music, where instruments like the fiddle and accordion were adopted and reinvented. Artists like Doug Kershaw helped popularize Cajun music, bridging it with country and mainstream audiences, illustrating how Cajun identity has persisted by honoring its past while embracing change.
FAQs
Cajuns are descendants of Acadian ancestors who were forcibly evicted from eastern Canada by the British in the 1700s and eventually settled in Louisiana. Their roots trace back to French peasants who colonized southeastern Canada in the early 1600s.
The Acadian expulsion was a forced removal of Acadians by British troops during the French and Indian War, starting around 1755. It involved burning villages, separating families, and deporting people on overcrowded ships, leading to starvation, drowning, and disease, with the population dropping from 14,000 to under 3,000.
After the expulsion, some Acadians, led by figures like Joseph Broussard, migrated to Louisiana starting in 1765. The Spanish territory offered them land, supplies, and religious freedom, allowing them to live peacefully and preserve their culture.
The term 'Cajun' evolved from the English pronunciation of 'Acadian.' Over time, English-speaking Americans altered the pronunciation, dropping the initial 'A' and softening the 'D' to a 'J' sound, resulting in 'Cajun.'
Cajun culture emphasizes tight-knit communities and adapting traditions, while Cajun music blends French ballads with instruments like the accordion and fiddle, influenced by Spanish, Native American, and African cultures. It later incorporated country and jazz elements.
Doug Kershaw is a renowned Cajun musician known for his high-energy fiddle playing. He gained fame in 1969 on the Johnny Cash Show and became a crossover success, blending Cajun music with country and rock, and is considered one of the most famous Cajun musicians in history.
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