Edwin Duhon, 95; founded Cajun band
LOS ANGELES -- When Louisiana musicians Edwin Duhon and Luderin Darbone founded the Hackberry Ramblers, the country was mired in the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just moved into the White House.
More than 70 years later, Mr. Duhon and Darbone were still making the good times roll with their lively blend of Cajun, western swing, and Gulf Coast dance music. They had reached late-in-life heights undreamed of when they were playing rural dance halls in the 1930s: a Grammy-nominated album, European concerts, and appearances on ''MTV Live" and the Grand Ole Opry.
Mr. Duhon, a key part of what may be America's oldest existing band featuring founding members, died Feb. 26 of natural causes in a hospital in Westlake, La., said Ben Sandmel, the band's drummer. He was 95.
''Edwin was a tough, tough old guy," said Sandmel, who is also the group's producer and manager. ''He played as recently as November in Baton Rouge, even though he was playing in a wheelchair and it was difficult for him to go."
But, in recent years, Sandmel said, Mr. Duhon ''had been going pretty strong for the most part."
That included flying to Paris in 2003 for a Hackberry Ramblers performance at a Cajun/zydeco festival in Burgundy, France, where the Louisiana band's reputation had preceded it.
Over the decades, dozens of sidemen have come and gone from the band, but Mr. Duhon, a multi-instrumentalist who played accordion exclusively over the last decade and sang in French and English, and Darbone, the band's fiddler, remained the historic core of the Hackberry Ramblers.
The son of an oil field worker, Mr. Duhon was born in Youngsville, La., in 1910. A Cajun, he grew up speaking French. He recalled that he was forbidden to speak French in school and whenever he did, he would be spanked.
Mr. Duhon, who learned to play guitar as a teenager, began playing music with Darbone when they were neighbors in Hackberry, a remote oil field settlement in southwest Louisiana. With jobs scarce during the Depression, they formed their band in 1933.
Originally an acoustic trio -- two guitars and a fiddle -- the Hackberry Ramblers were soon doing Monday morning remote radio broadcasts from a hotel in Lake Charles and playing in dance halls throughout southwest Louisiana.
After nine months, however, Mr. Duhon got married and left the group to take a job working in the oil fields.
The Hackberry Ramblers became known for bringing two innovations to the music of south Louisiana: They blended the Cajun repertoire with western swing and country songs, and they introduced electronic amplification to local dance halls.
Inspired by a politician he heard speaking over a public address system, Darbone ordered a $50 public address system through a catalog. Because many of the places they played lacked electricity, he'd hook up the system to a generator connected to the battery of his idling Ford.
In 1935, the Hackberry Ramblers signed with the RCA Bluebird label. The band recorded approximately 80 songs over the next four years, including the first recording of ''Jolie Blonde," which became the unofficial Cajun national anthem. (As is often the case in traditional music, the song had been recorded previously under a different title, ''Ma Blonde Est Parti.")
Mr. Duhon rejoined the group in 1943, and the Hackberry Ramblers recorded for the Deluxe, Goldband, and Arhoolie labels.
But music was a sideline for the band's members.
Darbone worked as a bookkeeper for a meat-packing company and Mr. Duhon by then was an oil industry electrical superintendent, whose work occasionally took him to Central and South America. He later worked as an electrician and at one point served two terms as chief of police of Westlake, La.
Mr. Duhon's wife, Cecile, died in 1981. He leaves 10 children and his brother, Willie.
The Hackberry Ramblers' resurgence began after Sandmel joined the band in 1987 because, he said, he had some experience booking musicians.
After not recording for 30 years, the Hackberry Ramblers recorded the 1993 album ''Cajun Boogie," which Sandmel produced and which was released by Flying Fish Records. That was followed by the 1997 album ''Deep Water" for Sandmel's small Hot Biscuits label, which later reissued ''Cajun Boogie."
After their ''Deep Water" Grammy nomination as best traditional folk album, the band received even more media attention.
In 1999, Mr. Duhon and Darbone realized a lifelong dream when the band performed on the stage of the Grand Old Opry.
In 2002 , Mr. Duhon and Darbone received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington. The next year, Arhoolie Records released an anthology of some of the band's music recorded between 1935 and 1950. The group also was spotlighted in filmmaker John Whitehead's documentary ''Make 'Em Dance: The Hackberry Ramblers' Story," which aired on PBS stations in 2004. 