Eclectic Company: Meet The Sundown Playboys

Did you know we have a Beatles connection in Calcasieu Parish? Twelve days before Christmas I discovered that the 60+ years-old Cajun band, Lesa Cormier and the Sundown Playboys, are linked to the moptops through the Beatles’ Apple Records label, which released their single “Saturday Nite Special” (written by their late vocalist and rhythm guitarist Darrel Higginbotham) backed with “La Valse de Soleil Coucher [or Couché] (The Sundown Waltz)” in the United Kingdom in 1972, soon after it was released in America on Ville Platte’s Swallow Records. The record became a favorite of the BBC’s young and influential rock disc jockeys, and the rest is history: The Sundown Playboys became a major influence on the Smiths’ lead singer Morrissey, who included their single on his 2003 release Under the Influence, explaining in the extensive liner notes that the shock of “Saturday Nite Special”’s never-before heard sound had haunted him for years without any context or reference point, and without even knowing the name of the song or the band, he’d remembered the tune after hearing it only four times! (You can find Under the Influence on amazon.com and other online locations.)

Enjoying the Sundown Playboys’ recounting of the way the Apple connection came about, I was suddenly jolted by the realization that here was the explanation for something that had puzzled me throughout my stay in England in the 1980s: the small but decided Cajun and Zydeco music craze that kept cropping up at folk music festivals and lunchtime pub gigs in London, where there would randomly be a Louisiana-flavored local band trading sets with other “exotic” danceable stylists like English Reggae and Afropop purveyors. It almost explained, too, why the late trad unaccompanied folksinger Peter Bellamy had wanted a New Orleans-style funeral with a brass band and a second line. It seems Louisiana came to Britain via the Sundown Playboys, and once the cat was out of the bag, just look at all the scrambling directions it set off in!

So there I was, at Lesa Cormier’s house by invitation. The four men seated around the table ranged in age from their 50s to 80+, and all were beaming as they stood to shake hands and introduce themselves. Cormier was the second and final drummer for the Sundown Playboys, having joined what was then his dad Lionel’s band (credited as having come into existence variously from 1945 to 1947) a few years after it started, and somewhat wistfully putting down his guitar ‘cause his accordionist dad needed him playing rock-steady in the rhythm section. After nearly 25 years, Lesa assumed the role of bandleader in 1971, when Lionel Cormier died unexpectedly with his boots on – onstage during a benefit dance at Lake Charles’ Bamboo Club, while taking a break as the emcee made announcements between songs.

And that was how Pat Savant entered the picture. Only a school kid at the time, Savant was a young accordion prodigy, meeting Lionel Cormier minutes before he died. So he was rather surprised when he was invited to step in and fill Lionel’s big shoes. Lesa’s son Danny was playing bass in the band then too, but he and Pat have long since left the older generation to get on with it in other bands. Savant was responsible for the Apple recording, because he’d noticed that the record bins in K-Mart were filled with Apple product, so he mailed a copy of the single addressed ‘The Beatles, London, England’ (kind of like sending letters to Santa, North Pole, don’t you think?) where it got into the hands of the label’s intrigued A&R head/chief engineer/George Harrison/Ringo Starr (you pick the likely one), who wrote back within two weeks to say that Apple would put out the single over the pond. Floyd Soileau, owner of the Ville Platte Swallow Record company helped negotiate the deal, and the Sundown Playboys had their 15 minutes of fame overseas.

But there was more to come: "Saturday Night Special" was used in the 1988 movie Sister, Sister, about sisters who turn their family’s Louisiana mansion into a guesthouse, starring Eric Stolz and Jennifer Jason Leigh. I admit that film missed me, so until I checked up on it for this piece, I had no idea that “La Valse J'aime (The Waltz I Love)" arranged by Eunice’s Ann Savoy and performed by the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band (comprising Ann, her husband Marc, the Cajun accordionist and accordion-maker, and fiddler Michael Doucet) was also on the Sister, Sister soundtrack. Small world, isn’t it?

Wallace “Red” Touchet, fiddler, and Larry Miller, steel guitarist, were the other two longtime band members reminiscing for me as I sat at one end of a long table, in front of a nicely laid-out collage of Sundown Playboys memorabilia – a scrapbook filled with photos and newspaper clippings, flyers, and other ephemera, yellowing copies of various magazines and newspapers, the vinyl Apple single record in a plain paper sleeve, and a couple of CDs including the October 2010 Apple release Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records, an album filled with the label’s one-off singles, where the Sundown Playboys are featured alongside Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were The Days,” and Badfinger’s “Come and Get It.” (For more details on the songs and artists in good company on the compilation, go to the source: www.applerecords.com/#!/albums/Come_And_Get_It_The_Best_of_).

In their heyday, the Sundown Playboys were too busy playing six nights a week after full days at the plants and other day jobs. These days if they play three times a month they’re not as busy as they’d like to be, but that doesn’t keep them from writing new songs that never fail to keep the two-steppers out on the floor. You should make a special effort to hear them at some restaurant or VFW Hall, because theirs is the real deal – music for a dancehall Saturday night and not an aerobics class. You can email lesa_cormier@yahoo.com for details of their schedule and some Cajun humor.