C.J. Chenier - 'Can't Sit Down'

Can't Sit Down lives up to its name -- it's a dancer-friendly, easy-to-like little album of classics, covers, and originals from zydeco scion C.J. Chenier. Yeah, you right!

It's hard not to draw comparisons between C.J. Chenier and zydeco legend Clifton Chenier -- not only because the former is the son of the latter, but because it's inevitable that every zydeco artist is compared to Clifton Chenier. Papa Chenier basically invented zydeco (or, at the very least, midwifed it into a modern genre), and all zydeco roads lead to him.

C.J. Chenier has not, however, failed to distinguish himself as a zydeco artist in his own right. He's not the accordion player that his father was (no one is -- Clifton was a singular, once-in-many-generations talent), but he's got a great, bluesy style and a knack for making zydeco modern and current without resorting to cheap production tricks. His gruff, expressive voice is more in the vein of Chicago bluesmen (think Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters) than the smooth, New Orleans R&B stylings of many of his contemporaries. And when it comes down to it, his music makes you want to dance, which is the whole point of zydeco, isn't it?

Can't Sit Down, Chenier's latest, doesn't push a lot of boundaries, and thank goodness for that. Sometimes straight-up, dancer-friendly zydeco is just what the doctor ordered, and this is 45 straight minutes of it. A few of the tracks are benign reworkings of zydeco classics: "Paper in My Shoe," "Hot Tamale Baby," "Can't Sit Down." Chenier penned a few of the songs himself, including the catchy instrumental "Red Shack Zydeco" and the tribute to frottoir inventor Cleveland Chenier, "Ridin' With Uncle Cleveland."

One of the big highlights of the CD comes with the Tom Waits cover "Clap Hands." Said Chenier about the song: "I didn’t understand Tom Waits at first, but my guitar player is a Tom Waits freak and one day he brought a video of Tom Waits. That's where I learned to appreciate what he was doing. When I heard 'Clap Hands' I said, 'I like that song. I can do something with that song.'" And, indeed, he did something with it. The cover is catchy as hell.

A handful of classic blues covers round out the CD nicely. Zydeco and blues are kissin' cousins, and countless zydeco artists have covered various and sundry blues songs over the years, so it's no surprise to see "Baby, Please Don't Go" (which has been covered by Beau Jocque and Racines, among others) or "Trouble in Mind" (which has been covered by Clifton Chenier, Rockin' Dopsie, and more), but this album contains the first zydeco cover of John Lee Hooker's "Dusty Road" that I've ever heard, and it's a kicked-back scorcher. The album finishes out nicely, with an upbeat earworm: a timely cover of Curtis Mayfield's "We Gotta Have Peace."

1. Can't Sit Down
2. Baby, Please Don't Go
3. Clap Hands
4. Ridin' With Uncle Cleveland
5. Red Shack Zydeco
6. Trouble in Mind
7. Hot Tamale Baby
8. Dusty Road
9. Paper in My Shoe
10. Zydeco Boogie
11. We Gotta Have Peace

'Can't Sit Down' was released in September, 2011 on World Village Records. Total playing time is 45.1 minutes.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.