Chansons de la Campagne, by Ethel Mae Bourque

Chansons de la Campagne

by Ethel Mae Bourque

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Single Sleeve CD with 26 tracks of spoken word and singing

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Cassette + Digital Album
Ethel Mae Bourque hand-dubbed SPARKLE cassette. Photo by Erik Charpentier. Labels and stickers are home-printed and hand-cut.
Cassette includes bonus tracks!

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1.	I Sang For A Whole Week 00:29	buy track
2.	Chanson pour Papa 01:41	buy track
3.	Song for Papa 01:40	buy track
4.	Before We Had Electricity 00:04	buy track
5.	That Old Barn 00:36	buy track
6.	La plus vieille 00:07	buy track
7.	La Bouteille a Ruiné Ma Vie 02:56	buy track
8.	La récolte 00:27	buy track
9.	You Can Have Your Gold 01:02	buy track
10.	T-Louis 01:39	buy track
11.	One Of These Days 01:32	buy track
12.	Cogner 00:56	buy track
13.	Records en français 00:14	buy track
14.	Le café chaud 01:24	buy track
15.	Pas en anglais 00:07	buy track
16.	L’ouragan de quatre-vingt-douze 01:37	buy track
17.	Hurricane Andrew 01:46	buy track
18.	Ma jolie blonde (avec les Bougres Farouches) 02:19	buy track
19.	Cogner (avec les Bougres Farouches) 01:35	buy track
20.	Song For The Cows 00:52	buy track
21.	La chasse 00:20	buy track
22.	Come Sit By My Side 00:24	buy track
23.	Viens t’assir auprès de moi (avec les Bougres Farouches) 01:29	buy track
24.	Les maringouins (avec les Bougres Farouches) 01:56	buy track
25.	La Bouteille a Ruiné Ma Vie (avec les Bougres Farouches) 02:27	buy track

about

Nouveau Electric Records is proud and excited to be releasing Chansons de la campagne by the late Ethel Mae Bourque, a family friend, mentor and inspiration to the nascent Lost Bayou Ramblers’ founder Louis Michot. It’s being released October 4 via streaming services, download and Compact Disc.

Documented in 2003, these performances could have been recorded 100 years earlier. Ethel Mae original songs were born out of necessity and for her own amusement, and her versions of Louisiana French classics took on new life as she improvised lyrics to express her own personal joys and struggles. 70 years old when she recorded these performances, Bourque was a past master of self-sufficiency, hunting, raising poultry, and foraging for wild fruit in an isolated corner of Vermilion parish along the banks of the Bayou Vermilion. Not owning a television or radio, she sang an assorted repertoire of a cappella ballads around the house for entertainment.

Ethel Mae had grown up next door to the Michot’s family camp, La Roue Qui Pend, and knew the family’s band Les Freres Michot (led by Andre and Louis’ father), but had moved to her grandfather’s land to raise her own family by the time the Michot children were born. As a young boy, Louis frequented La Roue Qui Pend, walking next door to visit with her father Sindey.

“One of my most vivid memories as a child,” recalls Michot, “was following Sidney Bourque around his farm, him explaining his homemade ways to feed his chickens, geese, pigs all in Cajun French: a truck tire watering basin and clothes dryer feeding trough. At least I thought that’s what he was saying -- I didn’t speak any French at the time, and Sindey didn’t speak any English. He brought me inside the kitchen, where Mrs. Ozite Bourque was frying up Beigniets in pure lard. They used everything, and grew, raised, and hunted all of their food. I felt lucky to have seen such a lifestyle still being practiced in the 1980s.”

Years later, Ethel Mae phoned to thank David Michot, the Ramblers’ bassist at the time
on the eve of the release of the band’s debut Pilette Breakdown which featured Sidney on the front cover. She was thanking him for feeding her dogs while she cared of her sick mother and to return the favor, she wanted to give David a song; it was the song she composed for her father during his final days alive. She sang this ballad again and again for a whole week as he slowly and painfully expired from lung cancer and pneumonia; Sidney couldn’t afford pain medication, and Ethel’s singing was his only comfort. David, who lived in New Orleans at the time, asked Louis to collect the song.

Louis called Ethel Mae and did his best to understand her directions to the house. At the time he thought she had a CD or a 7” for him to pick up. As his truck was in the shop, Louis asked a beautiful young woman who he had just met and danced with at Festivals Acadiens for a ride. That young woman, Ashlee Wilson, is now his wife, and the trip was their first date. When the two finally found her homestead, hidden off the winding roads along Bayou Vermilion, Bourque invited them into her kitchen, and immediately sang the song she’d comforted her father with.

Louis and Ashlee, who had both recently begun learning Louisiana French, were entranced by the poetry of the lyrics and haunting melody. They began dropping in on Bourque every week or so, bringing her groceries and chewing tobacco, as Ethel didn’t drive, and rarely left the trailer she lived in.

Eventually, Louis brought his friend, documentarian Erik Charpentier, to record Ethel Mae’s songs and chronicle her lifestyle, usually over a giant pot of gumbo made from her own chickens and a constant supply of frozen shrimp. These visits led to Bourque performing at Lafayette’s Cité Des Arts in 2004. This whole time, she tended her own gardens and chickens by herself, using two canes to walk, and very minimal resources overall. She taught him much about life and survival, and the two had wonderful times playing music together.

Louis continued his pilgrimages to Ethel Mae’s until she was mandatorily evacuated in 2008 at the advance of Hurrican Gustav. The two continued to keep in touch via regular phone calls after she settled in a nursing home in Arkansas near her son, finally getting the care she’d long needed and deserved. She passed away in this facility in 2011.

Ethel Mae Bourque was living folklore. Her mind held the secrets of a Cajun lifestyle that has virtually disappeared in the 21st century. Her songs and stories live on.

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released October 4, 2019

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about

Ethel Mae Bourque Maurice, Louisiana

Recorded in 2003, Ethel Mae Bourque's "Chansons de la campagne" could have been recorded 100 years ago. Her original songs were born of necessity and amusement, and her covers of Louisiana French classics take new life as she improvises the lyrics to represent her own joys and struggles. Ethel passed away in 2011 after a mandatory evacuation from Hurricane Gustav. Her songs and stories live on. ... more

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