Those Cajuns, so the liner notes tell us, went off to war and came back with guitars and drums on their minds and in their hands. Thus, scores of snappy gator-swipe swamp rockabilly (swampabilly?) on these sets, cut mostly before Kennedy left Massachusetts. Cajun accordions actually sound shocking when they kick in, without warning for Lawrence Walker & His Wandering Aces’ “Keep Your Hands Off,” from 1959. Buy on AmazonThey burgeon, hide, wait out the blues, come back to remind you who’s boss. Hot on that one’s heels, Robert Bertrand shouting afore Nathan Abshire & the Pine Groove Boys, never released until last year. The song? “That’s All Right Mama.” Which sounds spookier with (again) accordion than you’ll imagine.

John Fred, not yet of “Judy In Disguise,” absconds with John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Children,” not caring how square, how upright, how casual he sounds. “I don’t care what mama don’t ‘llow,” he submits, and by the end he doesn’t care about John Lee Hooker either. This is not racism. It is joyriding. An insistence on appropriation for the self. Did you hear that? Rock and roll being born?