Photograph: Mark Ardoin watching daughter Adleigh play the washboard with plastic forks. (Photograph by Freddie Herpin.)
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
It was easy on Saturday afternoon to imagine the front porch scene at a Cajun Prairie farm house nearly a century ago and watching couples waltzing to music sung in French.
As featured guest for the monthly Zydeco Capital City Jam, Mark Ardoin removed his St. Landry Parish Tourist Center audience members from the present and brought them back into the era of house bands filling summer breezes with the sounds of accordions, fiddles and scrub boards.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard him, but Mark’s certainly authentic,” said French and Creole musician Don Fontenot, who sat in and played acoustic guitar alongside Ardoin, who was backed on the Cajun fiddle by Bridgette Murphy.
The concert that lasted over three hours was also appropriately glazed in Ardoin family musical history.
Descendants of Cajun and Zydeco musical pioneers Amedee and Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin photographed and videoed the Saturday performance that was aided by musical guests Wayne Singleton and Russell Ardoin.
Russell Ardoin grabbed a pair of stainless steel forks from the Tourist Center kitchen and provided occasional percussion on the washboard, while Mark Ardoin and Fontenot sang Clifton Chenier and Amedee Ardoin originals that have been resung by artists for decades
Mark Ardoin said it’s difficult to imagine a time when he wasn’t holding an accordion on his lap.
“My dad (Paul Ardoin) had an accordion and I guess I was about three when I would sit down on the bed with it. I was too young to hold it. I pretty much learned (the accordion) on my own and I’ve been out there playing for the last two years. I love playing the old tunes, but the bottom line is I like playing all good music,” Ardoin said as he began packing his equipment for a ride back to the Elton area where he lives with his family.
His personal highlight Saturday Ardoin noted, was the accompaniment on the rub board by his seven-year-old daughter Adleigh.
“That’s what always makes this special for me, having her sitting beside me and playing along,” Ardoin said.
Singleton, an internationally-recognized musician who played several songs on the accordion, said Mark Ardoin has the touch of a purist when it comes to preserving the songs once played by Ardoin cousins (Amedee and Bois Sec) and other Creole and Zydeco artists.
His sons, Wayne and Anthony Singleton, ages 11 and 10, played one song, something that caught the attention of Fontenot.
“It was good to see Mark’s daughter and the sons of Wayne (Singleton) coming up here and performing with us. That’s the future you saw right there and something you want to happen and keep it going,” Fontenot added.
Singleton, who heads his Same Old Two-Step Zydeco band and owns a farm in the Lewisburg area, said he is developing an appreciation of Cajun French music and has started laying many of the songs that Mark Ardoin performed on Saturday.
“That’s where the roots come from and I’ve started myself to get into the preservation of where it all began,” Singleton said.
Mark Ardoin posed for a family portrait with family members before leaving Saturday and as he walked to his vehicle, he spoke to those still talking in the parking lot.
“That was such a great time. I really didn’t want to stop,” Ardoin said.
