Edward Poullard: Well, it’s the music of my family. My grandfather played it, and who knows before he came along, who else played it. Creole music is a lot of heartfelt stuff going on. It’s just in your blood I guess. I grew up right here in this little town. It’s an old oil town. I wanted to play everything, so I learned how to play the drums first, then the guitars, both bass and lead, and then I moved on to the accordion. Fiddle came last. My heart is the accordion and the fiddle.
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EP: It is my life. That’s what I’ve been doing all these years: performing and teaching. But it’s getting to the point where physically I can’t do it as often as I used to. Like right now I can’t play. It’s killing me.
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EP: Creole, it’s a music originally from Black prairie farming communities.
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EP: They had house dances back then in the early 1900s, and the music that they played was close to Cajun music. They just put their own influence in it. They said the Germans brought the accordion to Louisiana, but a lot of the Black prairie Creoles were learning accordion too. They just put a different feel, more soul, a little bit more bump. [laughs]
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EP: There’s a whole lot of things happening, depending on what songs are being played and who I learned them from. The culture itself, that’s a big part of it. Bois Sec Ardoin was related to my mother. He was a real good and popular accordion player. In 1963, him and a guy named Canray Fontenot recorded an LP called Les Blues Du Bayou, and that was my biggest influence on hearing the fiddle and the accordion together.
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EP: Being involved in the passing on and the teaching, I’ll do anything I can to help people learn. I’m most grateful for is to get my kids involved in it, too.
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EP: You play strictly from the heart, at least I do. That’s enough to motivate anybody. I guess that’s why I did it so long.
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