The Promised Land (4*)

Lil Band of GoldTuesday, 2 April 2013

An Australia-only release that provides a soundtrack to a documentary of the same name, The Promised Land delivers a classy collection of tunes that could, generically, be labelled swamp pop, though there are some who might be scratching the old noggin at the inclusion of a cover of ELO’s Hold On Tight as one of the album’s fourteen tracks.

Well, you would if you were looking for something that could be slotted into a generic classification as Cajun or Zydeco or whatever, but when you’re talking swamp pop you’re not exactly operating in clearly defined territory. What you’re getting once you head off into swamp pop is, according to Rick Koster’s Louisiana Music, a hybrid that evolved in the early-to-mid fifties at a time when the young folks in ... southwest Louisiana ... were itching to Americanize the French-speaking culture of their parents and grandparents. So you’re looking, in other words, at traditional Cajun (French-speaking white) and Creole (French-speaking black) forms filtered through a rock’n’roll and R&B sensitivity to produce slow dancers or fevered high energy jumping jive.

Alternatively, Lafayette swamp popper Gene Terry is quoted in the documentary The Promised Land soundtracks describes it as white guys playing black music damn good. You’ll find Terry written up in Louisiana Music a couple of pages after Lil' Band O' Gold’s drummer (the Godfather of Swamp Pop) right before Johnnie Allen, who gave us the swamp-pop arrangement of Chuck Berry’s The Promised Land that was one of the highlights of a compilation album called Another Saturday Night. If you’re watching that clip I’d point out that today Johnnie Allan is a retired teacher and principal!

Singer/guitarist C.C. Adcock and singer/accordionist Steve Riley (Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys) came up with the idea for Lil' Band O' Gold over pork chop sandwiches at a Creole restaurant in Lafayette in 1998, and the band’s main gig seems to be a Monday night jam at the Swampwater Saloon in Lafayette,so we’re talking an outfit comprised of players whose main gig lies elsewhere and gets together to have some fun. Judging by The Promised Land, they’ve succeeded.

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© Ian Hughes 2015