Menard was Cajun music ambassador

NEW ORLEANS — D.L. Menard, the Cajun musician whose song The Back Door became an anthem for his culture and carried him to 38 countries on U.S. State Department tours, has died at the age of 85.

Menard died Thursday at the home where he lived with his granddaughter, Nelda Menard, in Scott, Louisiana, a funeral home said.

Including covers by other artists, the Cajun French song has sold more than one million copies over the decades, according to Floyd Solieau, whose Swallow Record Co. released La Porte en Arriere as a single in July 1962.

Menard became a goodwill ambassador for Cajun music and culture, the heritage of people who settled in the bayou country of south Louisiana after being expelled from Acadia in French Canada 250 years ago. Speaking in late June, he said the resurgence of Cajun culture in the past few decades made him feel “terrific. Because that was us. It was us.”

The Back Door is a jaunty ditty about a man who gets so drunk, he sneaks home through the back door.

Menard wrote that song between pumping gas and filling tires at a gas station. For much of his life, music was a part-time gig. It became full time after his chair-making business burned down in the 1990s, but he was already well-known by then.

Menard’s albums were twice nominated for Grammy Awards. Le Trio Cadien, which he recorded with Eddie LeJeune and Ken Smith, was nominated for best traditional folk album in 1993. His Happy Go Lucky was nominated for best Zydeco or Cajun album in 2010.

Menard married Lou Ella Abshire in 1951; she died in 2001. Their survivors include seven children, 17 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.