Biography
Jules Angelle Lamparez entered the world destined to perform as Papa Cairo, a steel guitarist whose approach stood apart in Cajun music while he supplied lead vocals on fiddler Chuck Guillory’s 1949 hit single “Big Texas.” Because demand for his instrument ran lower in that tradition than for fiddle or accordion, Cairo expanded into Western swing and country circles, spending part of his career as a sideman alongside Texas honky-tonk figure Ernest Tubb. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he remained a constant presence on the dancehall and saloon circuit at the height of popularity for Guillory and Leroy “Happy Fats” LeBlanc, appearing across Louisiana and Texas as a member of Chuck Guillory & His Rhythm Boys. He also led his own ensembles, among them a Port Arthur-based Western swing group that briefly included a young vocalist named George Jones, later one of country music’s major stars. Former Rhythm Boy Marty Robbins likewise knew the band’s repertoire intimately, lending possible credence to Cairo’s claim that Robbins appropriated a composition Cairo had written for the group, “You Just Wait and See,” and released it under the new title “Pretty Words.” Guillory had cut the original number during the same sessions that yielded the 1949 success “Big Texas.” Cairo’s résumé further includes work alongside Jimmie C. Newman, Rufus Thibodeaux, Harry Choates, and the commercially prominent Cajun performer Doug Kershaw. When Arhoolie later assembled sessions with veteran Cajun musicians, Cairo contributed to both the Harry Choates release Fiddle King of Cajun Swing and Guillory’s project Grand Texas; reviewers singled out his playing and singing on the latter. His earliest recordings, whose publishing rights have either expired or become entangled in legal disputes, frequently surface on unauthorized anthologies such as the two-disc Cajun set issued by Disky, and selections have also appeared on a Japanese Western swing compilation from the Tishomongo label.