Cajun anthem? Oh meo myo!

After the epic poem “Evangeline,” the best-known rhyme about the Cajun country might be Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya,” even if nobody who’s ever lived on any Louisiana bayou ever called anyone else “ma cher amio.”
Some people claim “Jambalaya” may be even better-known than “Evangeline,” and attribute that to the fact that Longfellow never thought about rhyming “good-bye Joe” with “me gotta go,” and that he just never could find a really good rhythm guitar player.
Since Williams released his famous version in 1952, a long list of performers from the Grand Ole Opry to the Liberty Theater have tried their hands at it, making “Jambalaya” one of the best recognized, if least authentic, songs about the Cajun country. The list of copycat artists runs from A to Z (Paul Anka to the Zydeco Flames), and includes such likely and unlikely names as Rex Allen, Brenda Lee, Little Jimmy Dickens, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Newman, George Jones, Kitty Wells, Fats Domino, Connie Stevens, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Pat Boone and Gerry and the Pacemakers.
Hank’s version topped the country music charts for 14 weeks, and Louisiana music historian John Broven claims that the Williams recording made “Jambalaya” “the best known Cajun-based country song ever.”
I don’t think any of the other versions reached the top of the pile. Probably the next most noteworthy version was by fellow Grand Ole Opry performer Moon Mullican, who many people believe wrote or, at least, co-wrote the song.
Moon, who was baptized Aubrey Wilson Mullican, in Polk County, Texas, had about as much Cajun blood as the Alabama-born Williams, but that apparently has nothing to do with anything. (Remember that the Louisiana legislature once tried to make a poem about Mississippi our “official” state verse.)
Whatever its authorship, somewhere along the line “Jambalaya” acquired a reputation as a genuine Cajun folk song, which it isn’t. But it does have a tiny bit of authenticity in its Cajun pedigree. The melody is based on “Grand Texas,” made popular by The Hackberry Ramblers, Papa Cairo and Aldus Roger, among others, although the lyrics to the two songs have little in common.
“Grand Texas” is a song about a woman who left the singer to run off with another man to Texas, while in “Jambalaya” the singer and his girl Yvonne plan to stay at home and “have big fun on the bayou.” (Have you ever noticed how many Cajun songs talk about running off to Texas? Why would a good Cajun want to do that?)
Lots of folks assumed that Williams came to write the song because of his association with the “Louisiana Hayride” radio show that began beaming music across the South via the 50,000-watt radio station KWKH in the spring of 1948. But the “Hayride” was produced in Shreveport and was much more oriented to country music than to Cajun.
A member of Moon Mullican’s family thinks the song’s origins come from a small south Louisiana bar owned by a woman named Yvonne on a bayou where Hank, as was his wont, had more than one wonderful time, some of which he could actually remember the next day.
That story has a ring of truth to it, particularly since Moon Mullican’s nickname supposedly was given to him for his predilection for whiskey of all flavors, but especially for moonshine.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.