Hurricane Ida

I was really shocked [by] what I have seen on TV about what happened to New Orleans due to Hurricane Ida.

Wish you all the best, and hopefully New Orleans and Louisiana will recover soon. Thanks so much for your great work at OffBeat, my beloved magazine. OffBeat is really a cultural asset to New Orleans.

—Walter Ganz, Durmersheim, Germany

Lyle Ferbrache

OffBeat is such a great way to stay in touch with the music and culture of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. I really appreciate all that you, Jan [Ramsey], and your colleagues do to keep the traditions alive and support their evolution.

I would like to let you know about the recent passing of my close friend Lyle Ferbrache, who had a passionate interest in the Cajun music and culture of the late ’40s and early ’50s. Lyle amassed a collection of extremely rare recordings and carried out a number of interviews with the players, producers, and others involved in making the great music of that era. His collection makes up the at the Lyle Ferbrache Cajun Music Collection at the Library of Congress. Lyle produced and wrote the book that accompanied the beautiful Acadian All Star Saturday Night box set on Bear family and wrote a number of important articles on the musicians of that era (mainly for Blues and Rhythm) and consulted on a number of Ace Records releases. Because of his knowledge of this music and the people who made it, he became a go-to-source of information for others with such interest, including John Broven (who knew him well) and people at the Cajun Music Hall of Fame. I do not know if it would be possible, but Lyle’s family and others, including many folks in Louisiana, would be most appreciative of a short note about his efforts to save, document, and promote the music that he (and many others) loved.

—Dale Preston, Eureka, California

Read an obituary of Lyle Ferbrache in this issue at this link.