Biography
Although regarded as an elite Cajun musician, Wallace Cheese Read never pursued music professionally, perhaps worried that reviewers would poke fun at his surname. Devotees of the genre could appreciate his modest yet outstanding recorded output as a mellow interlude during an evening or as one course among several in a multicourse French repast, suggesting a bit of cheese followed by a bit of reading, or simply Cheese Read. Should that same relaxed evening extend to online browsing, a likely destination would be a site cataloging performers whose names invoke cheese; this Cajun master joins roughly a dozen others in that savory category, among them the progressive bluegrass ensemble String Cheese Incident from Boulder, CO, and the only mildly pungent lounge performer Richard Cheese. The core of Cajun “home music,” with its emphasis on non-professional performance settings, defined this artist’s approach. He favored playing in domestic surroundings over any formal engagement, finding greatest satisfaction in spirited gatherings where a handful of friends convened and a band played from a corner. Read earned recognition as a resounding, forceful vocalist and as a fiddler whose bowing precision surpassed even the finest archers among Robin Hood’s companions. A fixture on the Southwest Louisiana circuit, his work appeared on disc with the irregular cadence of successive satellite images. Among the most prominent Arhoolie collections are the 1979 sessions paired with earlier unreleased field recordings of Read made by ethnomusicologist Dr. Harry Oster during the 1950s. When Oster set out to capture the folk songs of the Louisiana Acadians on the Mamou Prairie, this dimension of American vernacular music had received little notice. At that time the senior members of the community alone preserved living musical traditions, while younger generations were increasingly drawn, predictably, toward mainstream commercial culture. The profound significance of Cajun heritage and its lasting imprint on the Southwestern United States elevated figures such as this performer to minor-hero status, their loyalty to musical practice inseparable from loyalty to family custom. His songbook encompassed the spirited “Fiddle Stomp,” the more spirited “Bosco Stomp,” and the most spirited “Cajun House Party,” the last benefiting from an exceptional recording made in tandem with Marc Savoy. Read was among the historic Cajun musicians portrayed by filmmaker Yasha Aginsky, with those portraits released on video by Vestapol Videos.
Albums