Boys With (Toy) Guitars

why it's called "playing" music

“Gerard Delafose” ©1999 Rick Olivier

I made this photograph one night at Richard’s Club in Lawtell, LA, in the mid-1990’s. John Delafose, the bandleader out of frame, was Gerard’s grandfather. I was in the middle of a ten-year obsession with the lively sounds and sights of zydeco music. I had been hired in 1988 to photograph a two-night session of live recordings by Rounder Records at Richard’s (“Ree-shards”). That weekend turned into a decade of driving out west to zydeco country, shooting, processing, and sending prints back to the musicians. This image was shot on TMax400 and developed in Edwal FG-7, an amazing developer that I had tweaked with a tablespoon of sodium sulfite. I never souped in TMax developers, I just continued to use my “pre-tabular grain” developers. It made good negatives, different from standard tab developers. More organic-looking, punchy. Hard to describe but the difference is profound in silver prints. The silver prints I have of this image just sparkle. I was also quite fond of the Metz CT-1 “potato masher” flash I used with the ‘blad. Wide coverage and real Weegee-looking shadows. I love that “PEP”(si) at frame right. Gerard was a pepper so it fit. He’s now a full-grown man and bandleader in his own right. His uncle, Geno Delafose, is already a zydeco legend, as was his father, John Delafose. All the Delafose’s featured prominently in the Zydeco! book. You can even learn the origins of the name “zydeco” in our book. Hint: do les haricots in French taste better with salt?

Sometimes I would spend nights “out west” and never take my camera out of the Domke bag. If it felt right I’d shoot, if it didn’t I wouldn’t. Sometimes I would set up a portrait session at a player’s home or in a club. This particular night, I shot only one 12-exposure roll of 120 film but this image would become crucial in the Zydeco! book I made with author Ben Sandmel. It seems to capture the “folk” music aspect of zydeco where songs are transmitted from an elder to an acolyte, face-to-face, with no written transcription or academic instruction. Kids start out imitating the guys they see onstage, learn some licks from the older guys, and take off.

In mid-October I photographed the Abita Fall Fest in Abita Springs, LA. There’s live music on three stages from mid-day to 10pm and during the Saturday Tyler Kinchen gig I noticed this little boy with a toy guitar, below, not unlike the one Gerard D “played” that night thirty-odd years ago. When I started to make a couple pictures of him at first he frowned and scowled at me, I think from shyness. I scowled and frowned back at him at started laughing which seemed to loosen him up a bit. He generously gave me an understated guitar-hero pose with his mom standing just outside the frame. Three decades separate the two boy-with-guitar pictures but the spirit of each seems the same. The original digital images were delivered in color but I made a black & white conversion just to pair it up with the Gerard image and give a moment’s thanks for being able to make a living with the eye and camera after so many years. I hope this kid grows up to be a kick-ass musician. I can say saw him when he just started out.

“Boy with Toy Guitar at Abita Fall Fest” ©2023 Rick Olivier

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Rick Olivier