In South Louisiana, Clifton Chenier (1925–1987) grew up hearing his father play a style of music known as La La at house dances held in Black French Creole communities. It had a percussive and syncopated sound, played in spare combinations of an accordion and a washboard used to scrub out a rhythm. After picking up accordion as a curious teenager, Chenier soon brought into this sound the rhythm and blues that dominated radios and jukeboxes, crafting a new style that would be called zydeco. In the 1950s, he recorded for Elko, Specialty, and Chess, and joined national package show tours with stars like Little Richard and Etta James. A decade later, Chenier was quietly settled in Houston, the big stages seemingly behind him. But one rainy Saturday night at a Houston neighborhood bar, Chenier’s cousin Lightning Hopkins introduced him to Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, where zydeco and Clifton Chenier would find a new home and champion.

King of Louisiana Blues and Zydeco is a 4 CD/6 LP retrospective box set assembled in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Chenier’s birth. The set features a chronology of Chenier’s landmark work with Arhoolie and other labels, alongside a healthy dose of previously unissued gems. The 160-page book includes photos, posters, and other graphic artifacts from the Strachwitz Collection and deeply researched liner note essays by Grammy award-winning writer Adam Machado, public folklorist and radio host Nick Spitzer and longtime Louisiana journalist Herman Fusilier, along with a moving personal remembrance by Clifton’s son, Zydeco musician C.J. Chenier. The set is the first release on Arhoolie since the label became a part of Smithsonian Folkways.

With music and storytelling and abundant visual imagery, this set demonstrates Clifton Chenier’s life as a transformative artist — from his earliest days practicing in the barn back home, to his reign as the undisputed King of Zydeco.