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Profile
Boozoo Chavis
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1999 KBA Award Winner
Achievement for Blues on the Internet
Presented by the Blues Foundation
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Boozoo Chavis has been described as "chaos on two feet," and "a little bullet of a man who runs around onstage, shouting, yelling and playing his music with a trance-like intensity." Boozoo (a childhood nickname) is one of the originators of modern zydeco music. In fact in 1954, one year before Clifton Chenier was to cut his first hit, Chavis recorded "Paper In My Shoe." The song became the first zydeco hit single, and is still a dancehall standard. Wilson "Boozoo" Chavis was born October 23, 1930 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. "I'm a Frenchman…I grew up listening to French music. I used to listen to other accordion players at country dances, and that's how I got interested in playing. I had a French harp (harmonica) when I was nine, but I wanted an accordion. I didn't have any money to buy one, but I had an old cow that I traded for a calf. Then I traded the calf for a pony, and the pony I traded for a horse, which I sold to get the money to buy my first accordion." Boozoo began playing dances on the weekends and working as a jockey and horse groomer, racing quarter horses on the bush tracks of Louisiana. His influence is widespread and one of the best indicators of Chavis' success are the legions of musicians who perform his material. He has inspired a whole new generation of accordionists that includes Jo Jo Reed, Beau Jocque, and Keith Frank. Today he is the modern master of zydeco, as well as the undisputed king of the single-note and triple-note accordion. Now as he approaches his 70th birthday, the former racehorse trainer/jockey proves in each show that he's not ready to be put to pasture. He is undeniably a living legend in American Music.
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