A Saturday in July, 1973

I still couldn’t for the life of me figure out the name of the band in this photograph I took 50 years ago. I debuted my photo exhibit and coffee table book at a posh gallery in Lafayette, Louisiana just before the pandemic. I would have included the picture of the unusually vigorous accordion player in my book, but I felt funny about showing it without any information whatsoever. I posted it with hopes that one of the many devotees of Louisiana music would know — to no avail. Indeed, an expert did step forward on Instagram — Jesse Leger, a truly great old-time soulful Cajun singer and accordionist who I only found out about recently on social media. It turns out that once something happened 50 years ago, it’s not always so easy to find eyewitnesses.

Our workday looks like it began in Basile at high noon. The first couple pictures on the roll are of a man crossing Main Street, casting almost no shadow. it makes sense that we would have made a stop in downtown Basile en route to the wedding in Mamou, 25 miles away.

I’ve never been a good note taker. From time to time I’ve thought it would be a good idea to keep a journal, and for one stretch from May-July 1973, I dutifully wrote about 20 one-paragraph entries, about the music venues we visited looking for Cajun music and some of the characters we met along the way. Almost 50 years later, as I read my very last entry, for July 14, 1973, a veil was lifted from long forgotten events that happened over the course of a day.

The drive to Mamou became instantly memorable for us. Amidst the Cajun tunes and small town commercials on our Falcon’s radio (“Achetez des pantyhoses à Gibson’s Discount Center”), the French-speaking DJ made an announcement inviting everyone within earshot to attend the grand bal de noces at St. Ann’s Church in Mamou that very day. That was the same wedding dance we were on our way to photograph! We had learned about the wedding from fiddler/insurance salesman Lee Manuel, who cleared the way for us with the hostess. The celebrants were ready for a good time in the early afternoon, and Lee on fiddle and Jim Fontenot on accordion kept the dancers moving. I even got a shot of Fay sitting in with the band.

While not a great record keeper, I was careful about numbering my rolls of film after I developed them and made contact sheets. That gives the most basic of version of meta data that we had available at the time. Then each strip of film is numbered consecutively along its edge, giving another data point for the sequence of events.

All told, I shot about 50 exposures at the wedding, most of roll 35 and part of roll 36. Right after the wedding’s last exposure, there’s a black frame, then we’re in a dance hall and the band is Dewey and Rodney Balfa with young Ray Abshire. I loved some of the pictures at this club, which I always assumed was the Lakeview Club in Eunice, because I hadn’t’ bothered to write a note on the film sleeve. I had always assumed it was the Lakeview because my memory wrongly told me so. That location with the Balfas carried over to roll 37, then there’s another big dance hall with an unidentified band. That bothered me, and once I even posted the picture on Instagram to see if any of my Louisiana friends knew who it was.

I’ve always been a bad journal writer if at all. To this day, 50 years later, I still can’t keep up a journal for more than a couple days. I did keep a sporadic journal in Louisiana, and it’s right here by my desk. I just have never referred to it because it was so spotty and I didn’t think there was anything there. But I went back and read it again. I began it on May 24, 1973, not long after we had been awarded grant to study the French music of southwest Louisiana. Then, after about 25 entries, I stopped. The last entry, probably July 14, 1973 begins,

At night we went to the Town & Country in Riceville where Dewey & Rodney were playing. Afterwards we went to the River Club in Marmentau, a really impressive, high-ceilinged building that was crowded with dancers. The band was John Oliver and the Louisiana Ramblers.

But over the years, I’ve guessed (incorrectly) at the first dance hall and drew a complete blank on the a blank on the negatives that came right after the wedding — the second half of roll 36 and almost all of roll 37.

But then happened to come across my journal — just 12 entries written from May 24 to July 14, 1973.

The first location was a big dance hall where the Balfa Brothers were playing. I had alway thought it was the Lakeview Club in Eunice.

During our 2 years in Louisiana Fay and I took photographs at church halls, dance halls and other small town music venues. We both did a lot of writing, mostly about the musicians who ended up on our record. I see now in retrospect that if we weren’t sold on the band as good for our record, we stuck around for a few songs and usually moved on without writing anything. That’s why my journal entry of July 14, 1973, is now so important. It reveals the second part of the data — location and names of the subjects.

I did remember a fair amount about the wedding, but none of the precise details in my written observations. As I was reading the journal and looking at the wedding photos, it struck me in a flash that this journal entry also revealed what was in

But I had no idea where the rest of the pictures on 36 and 37Recently I happened to re-read one of my few journal entries and realized that it . Packed into those short paragraphs was precious information that revealed where and when those photographs were snapped. The text, which I’m sure I must have written the next day, reveals that we went to that we and the dance halls we visited, and the musicians we had come to hear.

I now knew that the unidentified dance hall we went to after the wedding in Mamou

closest I could come to identifying meta data from an analog world in which all we had to record our world was writing, using a film camera, and recording with audio tape.

this short essay one entry in particular that all of a sudden shed light on two rolls of film that I snapped 50 years ago. Not that it’s a such a big deal, like finding some lost masterpiece or Zapruder film.