Le Cowboy Creole

Second-generation zydeco musician Geno Delafose begins his fifth album with a song called "Everybody's Havin' Fun," which defines his approach to music and entertaining. Delafose is capable of turning out traditional zydeco songs and performances like "Baby, Baby, Baby" and "Tout l'Jour et Tout l'Soir," but he also has no trouble incorporating pop, rock, and country standards and playing them as though they were written for accordion and rub board. Thus, he and his band French Rockin' Boogie tackle the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved," the Ronnie Milsap hit "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me," the Commodores' "Easy," Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" (with its references to New Orleans and Louisiana), and Van Morrison's "Domino," giving all of them a Cajun flavor. The incorporation of such songs into Delafose's repertoire doesn't sound so much deliberate as serendipitous; you get the feeling that maybe one night somebody danced up to the bandstand and asked for one or more of these songs, and the obliging bandleader asked how it went. He emphasizes the groove over the lyrics in "Easy" and "Domino," which is just as well, and he doesn't mind singing the verses twice. If he doesn't always get the words quite right, that doesn't matter much, either. This is a party, he seems to suggest, and he's playing more for the feel than the content. ~ William Ruhlmann