There’s a bit of a debate over who actually “invented” swamp pop, and like the similar unresolved debate about rock ‘n’ roll, there are no easy answers. Like most musical movements, it seemed to happen everywhere at once. Everywhere in Louisiana, anyway.
That said, no one would deny that Van Broussard and his sister Grace did a large amount of the project’s research and development. Van’s Ascension Parish gigs and his subsequent string of early-’60s singles helped define the sound originally; Grace gave the genre its biggest pop success with “I’m Leaving It Up To You,” on which she paired up with Baton Rouge’s Dale Houston. This collection therefore serves an important historical purpose; it’s the first time all of Van and Grace’s ’60s sides, solo and together, have been released on one CD. (Note, however, that the Dale and Grace songs are not here.)
How well that translates into a solid listening experience depends on how much you love the groove. Swamp pop collections by one artist tend to be samey, monochromatic, and at 24 tracks and over an hour of playing time, this one is no exception. Some of these singles are excellent additions to the canon (Van’s “Tell Me The Truth,” “Crazy Baby,” “Feed The Flame,” Grace’s “Young Girls,” the duo’s “Set Me Free”), but too many others are unsuccessful attempts at welding the swamp pop sound to songs as disparate as Muddy’s “Got My Mojo Working” and “By The Light Of The Silvery Moon.” There are also some good examples here of what Van calls “swamp boogie,” namely “I Miss You So” and “Go On Yak Yak,” as well as a few surprises like Van’s own excellent attempt at Carolina beach music, “Cold Shoulder,” and the inexplicable “Kidnapper,” which is either metaphorically suspect or completely psychotic.
The only major problem with this collection is the sound. Even if the songs were mastered from the original 45s themselves, they should be clearer than this; the mono tracks here are so muddy as to be unplayable at loud volume. Still, this CD does fill a hole in the Louisiana music landscape, although it remains the talking dog of swamp pop compilations—notable not because it does what it does well, but because it does it at all.
