In 2006, Joel Savoy recruited friends Phillip LaFargue and Lucius Fontenot to help start a record label highlighting the music from the southern Louisiana region of Acadiana. Their focus was: “Louisiane. Musique. Culture.” Since then, Valcour Records has garnered a host of Grammy nominations and two Grammy Awards, keeping a spotlight on their regional music scene. From their beginnings outside of Eunice, Louisiana, in a small wooden building that once housed Savoy’s father’s first accordion workshop, to this past year’s A Tribute To The King Of Zydeco album that featured The Rolling Stones and Taj Mahal paying tribute to Clifton Chenier, Valcour Records has delivered Cajun, Creole, zydeco, and folk music to appreciative audiences worldwide.
“We started Valcour with a charge to platform, celebrate and elevate Louisiana culture on the world stage—specifically Acadian culture,” says LaFargue, who still runs Valcour with Savoy (Fontenot left the label in 2018). “There was so much going on back then that deserved to be discovered. In 20 years of doing this, we’ve seen a steady raising of the bar in talent, production and visibility, and our art forms have been met with greater appreciation. It’s been exhilarating to see.”
Joel Savoy in the Studio photo by Jo Vidrine
“Acadiana’s rich musical legacy deserves to be recognized as the fundamental piece of American music that it continues to be–especially as the lines between genres are blurred and everything sounds like everything else,” says Savoy, who, along with his work with Valcour, has long been involved in the Acadiana music scene as a member of the “The Von Trapp clan of Cajun country,” according to 60 Minutes—the Savoy family. Savoy says “When we started out in 2006 during a true ‘end of an era’ for recorded music, our mission was to empower this unique lightning in a bottle that was the young Acadiana music scene at the time, and to help the world discover it by making it available in all the ways. Looking back at our catalog of over 60 albums of music in Acadiana spanning the last two decades, it feels safe to say that we accomplished that mission, and I feel like a proud parent.”
OffBeat Magazine has covered most of Valcour’s releases. Including Boma Bango’s Étranger reviewed by Steve Hochman: “It’s not hard to imagine an only slightly alternate world in which a brand of rumba took root and flourished in the heart of Acadiana, just as it did in Africa in the heart of the Congo. Both places have Francophone colonial histories and inextricable ties to Caribbean cultures rooted in generations of the slave trade and migration from Africa.” Dan Willging reviewed Johnny Nicholas’ Mistaken Identity saying: “Texas Hill Country roots musician Johnny Nicolas hails his Valcour Records debut as a homecoming of sorts and for good reason: he’s been cultivating South Louisiana roots for years. Nicholas’ buddy Link Davis, Jr., son of Link “Big Mamou” Davis, Sr., first indoctrinated him into South Louisiana culture with visits to Basile, Louisiana starting in 1976 to jam with legendary Cajun accordionist Nathan Abshire.” Dan Willging also reviewed Riley Family Band’s La Vie De Riley and T’Monde’s Lights in the Harbor. Sabra & the Get Rights self-titled album as well as Daniel Coolik & K.C. Jones’ Spirited Melancholy were also reviewed by Dan Willging. And The Givers’ EP was reviewed in 2010 by Kathleen McCann.
C.C. Adcock, Dickie Landry and Mick Jagger
Dennis McGee is perhaps Cajun music’s most influential fiddler, an early recording pioneer who contributed a sizable repertoire that illustrated what pre-20th-Century Cajun music was like prior to the advent of the accordion. Between 1929 and 1934, he recorded what would become standards, most notably with legendary Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin and longtime fellow fiddler Sady Courville. Later in life, a number of folklorists and musicians visited him where he was often “recorded” but not quite at the quality of this field recording made by French folklorist Gérard Dôle in 1975. Valcour compiled an album of these recordings and was issued as Dennis McGee: Himself in 2011.
Valcour Records’ first Grammy award was in 2013 for The Band Courtbouillon. Herman Fuselier wrote in OffBeat: “The Band Courtbouillon, and their self-titled CD on Valcour Records, has struck a nerve with Cajun music loyalists. The 14-song disc, filled with classics and one original about cooking and playing with friends, receives healthy airplay on Cajun radio shows. In Louisiana, whenever you have a party, you cook food and you play music. One of the most famous Cajun dishes is a courtbouillon. It’s one of my favorites for sure. Friends getting together playing tunes, that’s kind of the feel of the CD. You can almost hear a pot bubbling in the back.”
Bonsoir, Catin’s Light the Stars was reviewed in 2014. More recently in 2023, Jourdan Thibodeaux et les Rôdailleurs’s La Prière was reviewed by Dan Willing.
And of course, the 2026 Grammy Award winning A Tribute to the King of Zydeco. John Wirt indicated that “For the A Tribute to the King album, Savoy enlisted Louisiana musicians steeped in Chenier’s music. Lee Allen Zeno and Sonny Landreth were members of Chenier’s band. Marcia Ball, Johnny Nicholas and Jimmie Vaughan knew Chenier from Antone’s, the music venue in Austin, Texas, that booked Chenier for its grand opening. Chenier’s Texas-raised son, CJ Chenier, appears on the album along with many Louisiana musicians, including Dickie Landry, the saxophonist who accompanied Mick Jagger at a Clifton Chenier dance in Los Angeles.
C.C. Adcock and Keith Richards in Studio
Savoy said “The house band I enlisted to play on the record—Roddie [Romero] and Eric [Adcock] and Derek [Huston] and Lee Allen [Zeno], Jermaine [Prejean]—they’re the real deal. Sherelle [Chenier Mouton], who plays rubboard on the record, is Clifton’s brother Cleveland’s granddaughter.”
Billy Nungesser, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, will honor Valcour Records with a proclamation for their contributions to Louisiana music, with an anniversary concert set for November 19 at Acadiana Center for the Arts that will bring together the label’s musicians and collaborators for an evening that honors Valcour’s 20-year journey.
