Harmonizing With Zydeco Legacy : Geno Delafose and C.J. Chenier Are Happy to Honor--and Build On--Their Fathers’ Music

Each year during the week of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Crescent City’s combo bowling alley/music club Mid City Lanes holds zydeco showdowns, with two accordionists--perhaps a revered veteran such as Boozoo Chavis and a young Turk such as Beau Jocques--leading their bands in alternating sets as they vie for the “championship” of the rousing Louisiana Creole music.

It’s all in good fun, of course. But there are two key players who you’ll never find setting foot anywhere near these matches: Geno Delafose and C.J. Chenier.

“I’m not into competing,” Chenier says. “Music is not competition. It comes from the heart. If they say, ‘Let’s get together and jam, have a party,’ that’s a different story.”

Says Delafose: “Those battles and things--not interested. I don’t battle; I’m just another player. There’s no reason to compete. I’m Geno, and whoever they are is who they are.”

That’s not to say their careers are devoid of competition. Both musicians--who will lead their bands at the 10th annual Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival in Long Beach on Saturday and Sunday--make their music in the imposing shadows cast by their late fathers--Clifton Chenier and John Delafose, the true royalty of zydeco.

Clifton Chenier, who died in 1987, was the undisputed father of modern zydeco, adding blues and soul touches to the zesty dance music and taking it out of the bayou to cities from L.A. to Montreux. John Delafose, who died in 1994, was perhaps unrivaled as a leader of the movement to retain the form’s rural, folksier roots.

But this competition with their paternal legacies is something each son is honored to bear.

“I try to fill his shoes as much as I can,” says Geno Delafose, 24, by phone from his mother’s house just outside of Eunice, a small town in Louisiana’s Acadiana region. “I have no problem with that. People know my daddy had a great dance band. I’m not a showman, but I also have a really good dance band. I think he was a better singer than I am, but as far as an accordion player, I might be better. But he was a better writer. It goes both ways.”

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The younger Delafose fell into the role early, starting playing rub board and then drums with his father when he was just 7. As a teen, he took up the accordion as well and, increasingly, stepped out in front of the band for parts of shows. He was also featured with his father on the 1992 album “Pere et Garcon.” By the time John died, Geno was a seasoned veteran ready to carry on the traditions both on the road and with two albums so far, including the new “That’s What I’m Talkin’ About.”

For Chenier, 37, the transition was rougher. Unlike Delafose, he didn’t grow up with zydeco. He was raised in Port Arthur, Texas, where his friends--more into the soul hits of the day--teased him for having a father who played such strange, un-hip music. And in any case, Clifton was on the road so much that C.J. rarely saw him.

C.J. did pursue music, but it was jazz that attracted him, not zydeco. Only reluctantly did he join his father’s band (as a saxophonist) in the early ‘80s. And he was even more hesitant when Clifton, whose health was failing due to diabetes, starting grooming him to take over.

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When that time came, C.J. seemed tentative at times, fighting between wanting to add his own jazz and R&B; leanings to the music and his father’s fans’ demands for the straight thing. Now, though, after constant touring, he’s confident enough to make the music sound the way he wants to.

“I think people have come to know that I play what I play now,” he says by phone from a studio near Lafayette, where he’s recording a new album. “I’m not trying to imitate my daddy, because to me there’s nobody that can do what he did. I’m glad to be his son and glad people can look at me and remember him.”

Chenier’s most recent album, last year’s “Too Much Fun,” shows him not just walking the fine line between tradition and innovation, but also doing somersaults on it, mixing all his musical interests, anchored both by his now-impressive accordion playing and his full-throated vocals.

His next album, he says, will go even further afield, with him playing flute on one track and offering a rendition drawn from a very unlikely source--Elvis Presley--with a version of “Teddy Bear.”

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Though they disdain competition, Delafose and Chenier are at odds with each other when it comes to zydeco philosophy, embodied by their choice of instrument: Delafose favors the diatonic button accordion with its rural, folksy sound, while Chenier is loyal to the chromatic piano accordion.

“The button accordion [gives] that real chanka-chank sound,” Delafose says. “Piano accordion is fine, but bluesier. Button accordion just stands out there more.”

Counters Chenier: “Some of the things my daddy did got lost when the button accordion came back. It lost the blues.”

But they agree that the music is much richer than what you’re likely to hear at the showdowns these days, where the players just want to score easy points with gimmicky tricks.

“The style they play is not what my daddy played,” Chenier says. “They got a funky beat, but it’s the same funky beat. Don’t get me wrong--it gets everybody moving. But I’d get bored playing like that after a couple of songs.”

Concurs Delafose: “My style is a lot more simple than what those other guys are playing. Mine’s not funky. Other guys funk it up with a lot of bottom end. I’m not crazy about all that.

“I want people to hear the accordion,” Delafose adds. “If you can’t hear the leader, you might as well have a rhythm-and-blues band or a rock band. This is what makes zydeco zydeco.”

* C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band and Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie play Saturday and Sunday at the Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival, Rainbow Lagoon, Linden Avenue and Shoreline Drive, Long Beach. Also on the bill: the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys (Saturday only), Sheryl Cormier & Cajun Sounds (Sunday only), Benny & the Swamp Gators (Saturday only) and J.T. & the Zydeco Zippers (Sunday only). Noon to 7 p.m. both days; gates open at 11 a.m. $5 to $20, children under 10 are free. (310) 427-3713 or (714) 638-1466.