Early in 1985 I went south looking for some Cajun and Zydeco culture.  A friend told me to go to Grand Mamou to find the real thing.  My first night I walked into the well-worn Hotel Cazan and asked the bartender for a room.  The jukebox was playing a two-step accordion melody as she turned to pick up the register.  On her way back she paused on the beat, executing a perfect spin that ended with the open book gliding across the bar into my hands.  "Sign your name, or any name." she said with a lingering smile.

So began many months during the next two years on five extended sojourns in Louisiana.  It was one of the wildest adventures of my life.  Best of all, I photographed musicians, people and places for myself and for Ann Savoy's fine book Cajun Music, A Reflection of a People.

From the same period, my photo of Chris Strachwitz – sitting on the ground with a big grin, surrounded by the 78 rpm records he'd bought from the widow of a man who owned and serviced juke boxes in roadhouses during the 1940s – lives in the center of the box set cover of his Grammy Award winning Forty Years of Arhoolie Records.

Fais deaux-deaux, cher…