Photo courtesy of David Simpson
By Tina Eshleman
As Sheryl Cormier tells the story, it plays like a scene from a movie: She’s out for a night of music and dancing with a group of friends and family at Bourque’s Club in Lewisburg, Louisiana, and her sister, Karleen, approaches legendary Cajun bandleader Ledel "Blackie" Forestier with a question, “Would you let my sister play a song on the accordion?”
He says yes, but continues with his set, not taking her seriously. Karleen waits, then grows impatient and confronts the band leader again. “Will you let my sister play or not, because we’re going to leave and we’re a big party.”
“Your sister really can play the accordion?” Forestier is dubious, not having seen many women master the instrument. But he calls Cormier up to join the musicians and she nails the performance.
“He couldn’t believe it,” Sheryl recalls. “After that, he’d invite me to go every Saturday because it was a drawing card for them. People would say, ‘Let’s go to Bourque’s Club on Saturday night and hear that lady play the accordion.’ It started from there.”
“After that, he’d invite me to go every Saturday because it was a drawing card for them. People would say, ‘Let’s go to Bourque’s Club on Saturday night and hear that lady play the accordion.’ It started from there.”
That was almost 50 years ago. Today, Cormier is hailed as the Queen of Cajun Music, performing for audiences all over the country and across the ocean. She and her band, Cajun Sounds, will make their Richmond Folk Festival debut during this year’s event, set for Sept. 27-29.
“At age 79, Sheryl Cormier stands out as the only woman band leader in the prior generation of Cajun music, with a strong accordion ‘voice,’ whose husband does the singing,” says Nick Spitzer, host and executive producer of the public radio program American Routes on PRX, and a professor of anthropology at Tulane University specializing in American music and the cultures of the Gulf South. “Her great dedication is to playing the classic waltzes and two-steps with feisty power in the dance halls of French Louisiana. She’s a heroine and model to the many fine female bands and musicians today.”
Photo courtesy of David Simpson
“I’M THE BOSS”
Around the same time that Cormier took the stage with Blackie Forestier and the Cajun Aces, she told her husband, Russell, that she wanted to close the beauty shop she’d been running for nearly 15 years.
“I said, ‘I’m going to play music. I’m putting a band together,’” she says. “He said, ‘You should have done that 10 years ago.’”
Then Russell asked if he could be her sound man. “I said, ‘OK.’ Sometimes a husband and a wife don’t see eye to eye, especially in business like that. I said, ‘You can be my sound man, but I want you to know it’s my thing. I fail, it’s all on me. And on the other hand, I want you to understand I’m the boss.’”
Cormier’s band went through a couple of variations, including an all-female group. Eventually, Russell asked if he could sing a few songs. “I said, ‘Yes, but remember I’m the boss,’” she says. “It’s been like that ever since.” Sheryl adds that she is grateful for Russell’s support as both husband and bandmate.
Barry Jean Ancelet is not surprised by Cormier’s description of their working relationship. A professor emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and director of the annual Festivals Acadiens et Créoles in Lafayette, Louisiana, Ancelet has played a leading role in studying and revitalizing Cajun and Creole music and culture in Louisiana. He has known Cormier since the early days when she played with Blackie Forestier. When Festivals Acadiens celebrates its 50th anniversary in October, Cormier will be there to help with a tribute to Forestier, as well as to play with her own band.
“She’s a very take-charge person,” he says. “She’s got a strong sense of herself, she’s a powerful talent and she’s representative not only of women in Cajun music, but of musicians in Cajun music.… She has taken her rightful place as somebody who has influenced what’s happening today. And she continues to do so. She’s still rocking it. Every time I see her, she blows me off my chair.”
Several years ago, Festivals Acadiens et Créoles celebrated the role of women in Cajun music going back to Cléoma Falcon, who sang and played guitar on the first commercial recording of Cajun music in 1928. “The godmother, if you will, who performed with the group of women that appeared onstage that night was, of course, Sheryl Cormier,” Ancelet says. “Most of the women playing Cajun music today point to her as an inspiration, just showing that the door could be opened.”
“Most of the women playing Cajun music today point to her as an inspiration, just showing that the door could be opened.”
When Cormier plays at the Richmond Folk Festival, she will be accompanied by Russell on vocals.
“He’s one of the best singers around,” Ancelet says of the elder Russell. “He’s so soulful. He stands there with his hands crossed in front of him and sings his butt off.”
The Cormiers’ son, Russell Cormier Jr., will join them on drums, along with fellow band members David Greely on fiddle—himself a well-known musician—bass player Brett Denais and Chris Lougon on pedal steel. One of the songs their audiences are likely to hear is a popular original song by Sheryl, “La Bouteille” (“The Bottle”), about someone who turns to drinking to get a lost love off their mind.
Despite those bleak lyrics, she describes her style of playing as upbeat Cajun music: “It’s not zydeco and it’s not traditional. I do respect the traditional sounds and the artists of the past, but you’ve got to go forward.”
Photo courtesy of David Simpson
A CAJUN AMBASSADOR
Cormier’s career has coincided with a resurgence in appreciation for Cajun music as a distinctive American genre, sparked in part by Cajun fiddler and singer Dewey Balfa's legendary appearance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Named for French-speaking Acadians who settled in Southwest Louisiana in the 1700s after being forced by the British to leave their colony in eastern Canada, Cajun music is also influenced by Scots Irish, German, Caribbean and Native American cultures. Songs are traditionally sung in French and accompanied by a button accordion, guitar and fiddle.
Sheryl began teaching herself how to play the accordion at age seven after listening to her father play it on weekends with his band, Andrew Guilbeau & the Sunset Playboys, with her mother occasionally joining in on drums. She had to learn on the sly when her father went outside to do farm work, because the accordion was a prized possession he didn’t want anyone else to touch.
“I knew then that I could take out the accordion,” she says. “I learned two or three notes at a time, as often as I could get my hands on the accordion.”
In the end, her father was more proud than angry. Cormier paid tribute to him by recording “The Guilbeau Waltz,” a tune he had often played, as her first single, which Forestier produced.
Reflecting on her career, Cormier says she could not have imagined how far music would take her. Over the years, she has traveled to Nova Scotia—where the Acadians had emigrated from centuries earlier—and to Great Britain, Holland, Germany and Switzerland.
She has played at the Kennedy Center and the White House, she’s been nominated for a Grammy and she’s a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
“One night we were flying overseas and everybody was sleeping and I’m wide awake and tears rolling down my cheeks, thinking if only my family could see where this has taken me,” she says of her parents and siblings who have passed away. “I’m so thankful that God gave me this opportunity. I’ll do this as long as God gives me the strength.”