Swamp pop legend Johnnie Allan is a featured performer for Archive Aid 10, which will be held Friday at The Blue Moon Saloon, 215 E. Convent St. The annual fundraising concert for the University's Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, housed at the Center for Louisiana Studies, will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Allan is not only supporting the Archives as a performer, he's also added to its collection. He donated the following materials to the University: a complete collection of his commercial recordings; a set of posters from his career; letters and correspondence; newspaper and magazine articles; video recordings; and more than 2,500 photographs he collected.
Some of them were featured in Memories: A Pictorial History of South Louisiana Music, 1920s-1980s, which he published in 1988. He published an updated version of the book in 1995. He also is the co-author of Born to be a Loser: The Jimmy Donley Story, about a talented and troubled 1950s songwriter.
Allan also donated the master recording for an album he produced of Cleoma Breaux's music. Breaux and Joe Falcon, the husband-and-wife team who made the earliest recordings of Cajun music, were his great aunt and uncle. Allan published the collection Cleoma B. Falcon: A Cajun Music Classic in 1983.
"I was happy to do it because I felt her contributions as a musician had largely been ignored. Uncle Joe was getting all the limelight. Although she was an excellent songwriter and performer, she had been overlooked," he said.
Allan, whose real name is John Allen Guillot, was born in 1938 and grew up near Rayne. His father was a sharecropper. When he was about 11, he and his brother sold vegetable seeds to earn enough money for his first guitar, which his mother, Helen Falcon Guillot, taught him to play.
At 13, he and fellow classmate Walter Mouton formed Walter Mouton and the Scott Playboys. He later performed as part of Lawrence Walker's band. In 1958, he formed the Krazy Kats, a band that helped pioneer swamp pop music, a blend of genres including Cajun, country, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. Allan's swamp pop career extended in the 1970s and '80s and included several tours of Europe.
He also had a professional career as an educator. In 1981 he retired as principal of Acadian Elementary School. He holds a bachelor's degree in upper elementary education from UL Lafayette and a master's degree in education from McNeese State University.
Allan's materials are held in three collections at Edith Garland Dupré Library: the Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, the Cajun and Creole Music Collection, which holds commercial recordings, and Special Collections.
Michael Martin, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies, which oversees the Archives, said financial support is essential. "Although the University pays staff member's salaries, the Archives must otherwise be self-supporting."
This year's funding goal is $5,000, which would help pay for equipment upgrades and to hire a student worker.
Donations and grants support the Archives' activities, which include the acquisition, preservation and distribution of one-of-a-kind materials that document Southwest Louisiana's cultures. The archives include the work of folklorists, ethnomusicologists, linguists, musicians and historians.
The collection includes photographs, paper documents, and audio and video recordings, such as folktales and legends, and recordings of ballads, dance tunes and oral histories.
Its archivists digitize and catalog audio and video recordings. So far, they have digitized more than 12,000 hours of analog recordings.
Those materials are available to students and researchers through a searchable database and five listening rooms in Edith Garland Dupré Library. Contemporary musicians and bands have re-recorded songs from the collection, including Zachary Richard, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, The Magnolia Sisters, Bonsoir Catin and Feufollet.
The Archives are the official repository of musical performances of Festivals Acadiens et Créoles; the Blackpot Festival; video recordings from the weekly Rendez-vous des Cajuns show at the Liberty Theater in Eunice, La.; and video and audio recordings of Louisiana Folk Roots, which organizes the annual Balfa Camp, a week-long, immersive Cajun music education program.
Admission to this year's event is a $10 donation. Three bands will perform: The Rex Street Rounders, The Revelers (with special guest Johnnie Allan) and Bonsoir Catin.
The members of The Rex Street Rounders are UL Lafayette faculty: Martin, Drs. Jordan Kellman, Chad Parker and John Troutman, and Shawn Thibodeaux. Kellman is dean of the College of Liberal Arts and an associate professor of history. Parker and Troutman are assistant professors of history. Thibodeaux is assistant to the dean of the Graduate School.
Archivist Chris Segura and intern Adam Doucet will prepare a complimentary meal and host a jam session, which will close out the evening.