Biography
Floyd Shreve brought his skills as a versatile Cajun player to multiple landmark groups in the style, yet he also led his own unit and cut sides under the name Floyd Shreve and the Three Aces. One enduring track from that lineup, “Louisiana Sweetheart,” was waxed for Decca in 1935. Shreve’s recurring work with “aces” intersected with his partnership alongside Cajun pioneer Leo Soileau, who assembled the original Three Aces in 1934 amid a surge of western music crossing from Texas into southwest Louisiana and prompting many Cajun ensembles to abandon the accordion for string instruments alone. The Hackberry Ramblers, another band that featured Shreve, earned recognition as the first professional Cajun string band; founding member Edwin Duhon handled both guitar and the traditional accordion when the group formed in 1930, and Shreve participated in some of its earliest recording dates in 1935.
The original Three Aces formed a central thread in that same shift, with Soileau on fiddle, Shreve and Dewey Landry on rhythm guitar, and Tony Gonzalez covering bass and drums. Western swing supplied a primary model for these musicians, a sound the Hackberry Ramblers embraced and one that flooded Louisiana airwaves. Shreve joined Soileau’s Bluebird roster, whose string-band format omitted the accordion yet introduced the drum set to a Cajun session for the first time; the resulting sides—“La Valse de Gueydan,” “Hackberry Hop,” and the perennial “La Gran Mamou”—enjoyed wide popularity. By 1935 the unit had become Soileau’s Four Aces and moved to Decca.
In the early 1940s the musicians left Crowley, Louisiana, for Chicago in a battered Model A Ford, carrying a fresh contract to adapt country material to Cajun arrangements. Their readings of “Red River Valley” and “Birmingham Jail” remain notable, as do the polkas, Mexican songs, and assorted requests that filled roughly one hundred releases across the 1930s and early 1940s. “Jolie Blonde,” first captured by the Hackberry Ramblers, became one of the biggest successes, though debate persists over whether Shreve appears on both that version and the later one. Some historians have conflated Floyd Shreve with Floyd Rainwater, whose brothers belonged to the Hackberry Ramblers’ original roster; Shreve’s own involvement with the group peaked in the mid-1930s, when it operated under the separate identity of the Riverside Ramblers. That tire-brand namesake recorded in English, with Joe Werner handling lead vocals.
Shreve’s affinity for country-and-western styles aided the Riverside Ramblers’ climb onto regional hit parades and helped secure a Decca contract. Uncertainty also surrounds his possible presence on additional Soileau dates from the period; guitarist Jerry Baker received credit for the “Hackberry Hop” session, a listing that displeased Happy Fats, who maintained that Shreve and Bill Landry were the actual guitarists. Shreve’s professional activity appears to have ended sometime after World War II.
The original Three Aces formed a central thread in that same shift, with Soileau on fiddle, Shreve and Dewey Landry on rhythm guitar, and Tony Gonzalez covering bass and drums. Western swing supplied a primary model for these musicians, a sound the Hackberry Ramblers embraced and one that flooded Louisiana airwaves. Shreve joined Soileau’s Bluebird roster, whose string-band format omitted the accordion yet introduced the drum set to a Cajun session for the first time; the resulting sides—“La Valse de Gueydan,” “Hackberry Hop,” and the perennial “La Gran Mamou”—enjoyed wide popularity. By 1935 the unit had become Soileau’s Four Aces and moved to Decca.
In the early 1940s the musicians left Crowley, Louisiana, for Chicago in a battered Model A Ford, carrying a fresh contract to adapt country material to Cajun arrangements. Their readings of “Red River Valley” and “Birmingham Jail” remain notable, as do the polkas, Mexican songs, and assorted requests that filled roughly one hundred releases across the 1930s and early 1940s. “Jolie Blonde,” first captured by the Hackberry Ramblers, became one of the biggest successes, though debate persists over whether Shreve appears on both that version and the later one. Some historians have conflated Floyd Shreve with Floyd Rainwater, whose brothers belonged to the Hackberry Ramblers’ original roster; Shreve’s own involvement with the group peaked in the mid-1930s, when it operated under the separate identity of the Riverside Ramblers. That tire-brand namesake recorded in English, with Joe Werner handling lead vocals.
Shreve’s affinity for country-and-western styles aided the Riverside Ramblers’ climb onto regional hit parades and helped secure a Decca contract. Uncertainty also surrounds his possible presence on additional Soileau dates from the period; guitarist Jerry Baker received credit for the “Hackberry Hop” session, a listing that displeased Happy Fats, who maintained that Shreve and Bill Landry were the actual guitarists. Shreve’s professional activity appears to have ended sometime after World War II.