Canray Fontenot

Canray Fontenot earned the title "last of the great Creole and Cajun fiddlers" from Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz. Playing fiddle in a raw, elemental manner and punctuating each phrase with the steady stomp of bare feet, he ranked among the final exponents of the pre-zydeco Creole tradition that had taken shape in the nineteenth century. Several of his own compositions, among them "Joe Pitre a Deux Femmes," "Les Barres de la Prison," and "Bonsou Moreau," later entered the standard Cajun songbook.

Raised on the family farm, Fontenot acquired his musical ability from his accordion-playing parents. His earliest instrument was a homemade cigar-box fiddle strung with wire scavenged from a screen door, while its bow consisted of pear-tree twigs strung with sewing thread. Although his mother refrained from public performance, his father, Adam Fontenot—known locally as Nonc Adam—enjoyed widespread recognition among southwest Louisiana’s Cajun communities; Fontenot would eventually commit nearly the entire paternal repertoire to record.

In 1937 Amade Ardoin asked the young fiddler to accompany him to New York for the session that produced "Les Portes de la Prison," yet Fontenot’s mother declined permission, judging him still too young for the journey. After working with various string bands, he formed a lasting partnership in the mid-1940s with accordionist Alphonse "Bois-Sec" Ardoin; the pair performed together for more than four decades. Their first appearance beyond Louisiana came at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival, five selections from which later appeared on the 1975 compilation Louisiana Cajun French Music from the Southwest Prairies.

Fontenot maintained a lengthy relationship with Arhoolie Records. The label reissued the duo’s earlier Melodian album Les Blues de Bayou in 1970 and, in 1983, augmented several of its tracks with fresh material to create La Musique Creole. Fontenot’s final Arhoolie release, Louisiana Hot Sauce, Creole Style, arrived in 1993 and incorporated further selections from Les Blues de Bayou together with four pieces cut with Beausoleil in 1985. He also appeared in the documentary J’ai Ete au Bal, produced by Chris Strachwitz and Les Blank.

Throughout his career Fontenot supported his family by sharecropping and later working in a hardware store, ultimately financing college educations for four of his six children and law school for his daughter. He succumbed to cancer in 1995.