Huey P. Meaux, R.I.P.

Huey P. Meaux

Huey P. Meaux, the legendary and controversial Southeast Texas music producer who discovered the Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddy Fender, “Jivin’ Gene” Bourgeois and Barbara Lynn, died Saturday at the age of 82.

Meaux had been in federal prison since 1996, when a police raid of his Sugar Hill studios in Houston uncovered evidence that Meaux participated in child pornography, sex with underage females and drug possession. He skipped bail and ran to Mexico, but he finally gave up and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Meaux was released because of failing health and he lived in Winnie, where he died on Saturday.

Meaux, known as the “Crazy Cajun,” was a barber by trade and a radio DJ in Port Arthur, Texas, in the late 1950s. He would do a radio show on KPAC on Saturday afternoons, playing Cajun music for the transplanted coonasses who came to Texas to work at the oil refineries. One day Meaux got a visit from one of those refinery workers.

As Meaux told it, “He walked in with blue jeans and bare feet and these big thick glasses like Clark Kent. He wanted me to record his rock and roll band … I told him I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but if he was OK with that, then let’s get down to it.”

Huey Meaux's letterhead

The guy was Gene Bourgeois, soon to be known as “Jivin’ Gene.” In the old KPAC studio those days they had a Magnecord mono reel-to-reel, and Huey hung a ribbon mike from a boom. The drums, he put way back to keep them from overpowering everything and he put Bourgeois in the toilet to get the proper echo on his voice.

“Yeah, I really did sing in the shitter,” Bourgeois told me once. “But it was because I was so shy, I didn’t want anyone looking at me when I sang.” Anyway, the song was “Going Out With The Tide,” and after Huey sent it to Jin Records owner Floyd Soileau it became a regional hit. Jivin’ Gene’s next tune was produced by Meaux in Crowley (at J.D. Miller’s studio): “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” which is not the Neil Sedaka hit.

This song got more radio airplay, and eventually it was leased to Mercury Records, which put it out nationally. “Breakin’ Up” went to No. 69 on the pop charts in 1959, and Huey Meaux was on his way.

In 1962 Meaux produced a Beaumont singer, Barbara Lynn, and the song “You’ll Lose A Good Thing,” which rose to No. 8 in the Billboard charts. Meaux also signed Big Sambo, whose “The Rains Came” was a modest hit and Sunny and the Sunliners, who got a nice chart ride with “Talk To Me.”

In 1965, Meaux heard a bunch of kids from San Antonio who played a weird mix of rock and roll and Mexican music; he noticed first that it was a lot like Cajun music and then that it kinda had the same beat that stuff like the Beatles and the other British Invasion groups were doing. So he told the boys, “Grow some hair and let’s go cut some of this shit,” and the Sir Douglas Quintet cut their very first hit, “She’s About A Mover,” in Houston. Meaux produced their hits until the band got freaky and moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s.

Huey Meaux, with unidentified artist (or secretary) sitting on his lap in the 1980s.

Meaux also revived the career of Freddy Fender, who was an ex-con with a mechanic’s job when he cut “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” in 1975. Also cut in Houston, the song was first released on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label before being leased to Dot, and then it went all the way to No. 1 on the pop charts. “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” the followup, was also a Top 10 hit.

After Fender, Huey Meaux was content to cut regional artists in Texas and Louisiana. In 1984, Cajun/zydeco artist Rockin’ Sidney created “My Toot Toot” which got some airplay in the region and Meaux stepped in to get it signed to Epic Records, on which it rode into the country Top 40. It was the first zydeco record to get airplay on major rock, pop and country radio stations of the day.

Meaux always was loyal to his artists, and he never failed to offer a colorful story or two about working with them. His conviction and imprisonment was, like Phil Spector’s, a sad and pathetic end to a legendary music career.

MP3: “Going Out With The Tide” by Jivin’ Gene

MP3: “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” by Jivin’ Gene

MP3: “The Rains Came” by Big Sambo

MP3: “She’s About A Mover” by the Sir Douglas Quintet

Joe Nick Patoski article in Texas Monthly about Huey Meaux

YouTube: Huey Meaux on KPFT-FM, Houston, in 1974

Your Sister’s (Record) Rack: Singles, Part 8 – Catahoula Jukebox

Welcome to our big Labor Day singles spin-a-thon … I believe I mentioned earlier that the first single I ever bought was “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys.  Naturally, I still have it in a box some place.  So yesterday I’m looking for it, and as I flipped through the stacks of old 45s a wave of memories came flooding back to me.

My grandmother on my mother’s side and her second husband (not my grandfather) owned a pool hall/dive bar back in the 1960s, in Catahoula, Louisiana.  Called Knott’s, the place was a ramshackle building on brick pilings (to keep the bayou waters out) with plywood floors.  Even in broad daylight, inside it was usually dark as a cave.  And in one corner there was a jukebox.

As kids we’d go over to visit with my parents, and because my grandmother was usually tending the bar and cash register, we’d hang out in the pool hall.  She noticed we always asked for nickels for the jukebox, so once when the guy came over to change out the records she asked him for the old ones.  Naturally my brothers and I played the shit out of those singles, and later I shared them with my friends in high school.

There were some regional acts, playing traditional Cajun music but there were some swamp rockers and blues guys too.  Some golden oldies from the 1950s stayed on the jukebox but the record guy had to frequently replace them with fresh copies.  Plus the occasional Tom Jones 45, some country (which we never listened to) and of course Elvis.  Usually they came in the wrong paper sleeve, sometimes with a simple handwritten notation in the corner: “Knott’s.”  There was one from the early ’70s, a single of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which said it was from the motion picture Lifehouse.   At the time I didn’t realize there was a Who’s Next album, with an even longer version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”  Maybe the LP hadn’t come out yet, I don’t remember for sure.  When those 45s came in what appeared to be the correct paper sleeve, you could guess the record didn’t get much play on the Knott’s jukebox.

Even after I grew a little too teenaged-cool to visit Catahoula regularly, we still got those records.  Well into the 1970s, my grandmother remembered how we liked the music so she’d usually send a stack back with my parents.  Knott’s eventually shut down, Knott himself died and finally my grandmother passed about five or six years ago.  I could probably try to play those old 45s but they’d crack and pop so bad you wouldn’t hear the music.  Or I could just close my eyes … and remember.

But I want you to hear them too.  So I downloaded ’em!

Rockin’ Sidney was Sidney Simien,  a zydeco musician who also played everything from blues to country.  He had a big hit in the 1980s, “My Toot Toot,” which was a payoff for Sidney’s years of kicking around the roadhouses of South Louisiana and Southeast Texas.  I always liked his old stuff, which rocked out.  Recording sometimes as Count Rockin’ Sidney, he put the blues into the swamp and it came out nothin’ but fine, fine, fine.  This one’s from 1961, when Sidney was recording for Floyd Soileau’s Jin Records.

MP3: “You Ain’t Nothin’ But Fine,” by Rockin’ Sidney

I didn’t need Knott’s Pool Hall to alert me to Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois.  He was actually our neighbor in Groves, Texas.  When I was about six or seven, my dad pointed him out on TV – it turned out to be either Jan or Dean; my old man didn’t know shit about pop music.  But we’d go hang out at Gene’s house and listen to him rehearse with his band.  When we tried to form our own band in the late 1960s, Gene would come over to the garage and tell us to turn it down.  Then he’d give us a bit of advice that we quickly forgot.  And there you go – I was never a rock star.  Jivin’ Gene was, and he is at his best in 1959 on “Going Out With The Tide.”

MP3: “Going Out With The Tide” by Jivin’ Gene and the Jokers

Benefit in Texas to help soul singer Jerry LaCroix

A number of the top musicians from Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana will band together this weekend in Beaumont, Texas,  to help Jerry LaCroix, the legendary R&B/rock singer.

Jerry LaCroix

LaCroix, former lead singer for the Fabulous Boogie Kings, Edgar Winter’s White Trash, Rare Earth and Blood, Sweat and Tears, experienced congestive heart failure earlier this year.  The event will raise money for medical bills and expenses LaCroix has accrued from his lengthy hospital stay.

A few years ago, LaCroix moved to the Hemphill area to help care for his ailing mother and began experiencing health problems of his own.  “I haven’t been in the best of health since last year. I was getting weaker and weaker and in a matter of days, I couldn’t stand up,” LaCroix said in an interview with the Beaumont Enterprise. “I fell down twice trying to walk with a walker and the second time, I hit my head pretty hard.”

The benefit is Sunday, at the Beaumont Crockett Street entertainment district and it will feature appearances by Wayne Toups, Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois, G.G. Shinn, Scott McGill, Charles Mann, T.K. Hulin, Ken Marvel, Gerry Mouton, Willie T. and others.

If you can’t make it to Beaumont but still want to help out, contact Don Ball at (409) 548-4444.

MP3: “Try A Little Tenderness” (live at the Bamboo Club) by the Fabulous Boogie Kings w/Jerry LaCroix

MP3: “I Can’t Turn You Loose” (live) by Edgar Winter’s White Trash

Jerry LaCroix official website

Rick Campbell’s blog in the Houston Chronicle

Jerry La Croix page on the Ponderosa Stomp website