Jo-El Sonnier, 77, singer and accordionist who sparked a revival of Cajun music
Jo-El Sonnier, a singer and accordionist who revived Cajun music in popular culture with hit versions of Richard Thompson’s “Tear-Stained Letter” and Slim Harpo’s “Rainin’ in My Heart,” and with appearances on recordings by Mark Knopfler and Elvis Costello, died Jan. 13 after a performance in Llano, Texas. He was 77.
The cause was a heart attack, music promoter Tracy Pitcox wrote on social media. He said Mr. Sonnier had been airlifted to a hospital in Austin, Texas, where he was pronounced dead.
Recordings by Cajun singers and players of stringed instruments like Rusty and Doug Kershaw and Jimmy C. Newman often reached the country Top 40 in the 1950s and ’60s. But it wasn’t until Mr. Sonnier’s arrival three decades later that Cajun accordion music became more than a regional phenomenon.
His album “Come On Joe,” released by RCA in 1987, contained four Top 40 country singles, including “No More One More Time,” a lovelorn ballad, and the rollicking “TearStained Letter,” both of which reached the country Top 10 in 1988. A two-stepping tour de force, Mr. Sonnier’s version of “Tear-Stained Letter” re-imagined Thompson’s hurtling Anglo Celtic original as a Cajun romp.
“Back then, country music was steel, fiddles, drums, and lead guitars, so it was a challenge to put the accordion up front,” Mr. Sonnier said of the making of the single in a 2009 interview with the blog 88 Miles West. “We used everything on that record that people thought you couldn’t get away with, and we did.”
His virtuoso accordion work and his vocals, by turns keening and supple, infused the country airwaves in the late 1980s with Cajun, rock, swamp-pop, and jazz sensibilities.
He also became a highly sought-after session musician, contributing chuffing downhome accordion to “American Without Tears,” a track on Costello’s 1986 album “King of America,” and to Dolly Parton’s chart-topping 1989 country single, “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That.”
A versatile multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Sonnier played concertina on Hank Williams Jr.’s 1982 version of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and added harmonica to Johnny Cash’s remake of the Rolling Stones’ “No
Expectations” on his 1978 album, “Gone Girl.” On that same album, Cash sang Mr. Sonnier’s “Cajun Born,” a tribute to his parents written with songwriter and archeologist Kermit Goell.
Bob Dylan, in his live sets, was among the other luminaries to perform Mr. Sonnier’s music, including “No More One More Time,” a song written by Dave Kirby and Troy Seals and popularized by Mr. Sonnier.
Mr. Sonnier released more than two dozen albums across six decades. In 2015, “The Legacy,” his final recording, won a Grammy Award for best regional roots music album.
Joel Sonnier was born Oct. 2, 1946, in Rayne, La., 150 miles west of New Orleans. His parents, Lemius and Eunice Sonnier, were sharecroppers, and Joel and his older brother, P.J., picked cotton alongside them from an early age.
Joel started playing his brother’s single-row diatonic button accordion at age 3 and first appeared on radio when he was 6. At 11, he made his first recording of Cajun music, an idiom descended from French Canadians exiled from their homeland in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) in the mid-1700s.
The Sonniers spoke only French at home, making it challenging for Joel, who was autistic, to navigate the larger English-speaking world around him. He nevertheless overcame that obstacle, as well as the social awkwardness sometimes associated with autism, enough to accompany his father to early-morning engagements at a local radio station in nearby Crowley, La.
“We were sharecroppers, got up real early and would play for about 15 or 20 minutes, then walk across the street and I’d have a doughnut and he would have his coffee,” Mr. Sonnier recalled in the 88 Miles West interview. “We shared something very special, and then he’d drive me to school.”
Mr. Sonnier spent much of the next two decades making a name for himself on the Southern Louisiana club circuit (at some point, that name changed from Joel to Jo-El) before signing with the Nashville division of Mercury Records in 1975. The recordings he made for Mercury barely broke into Billboard’s country singles chart, but they attracted the attention of Merle Haggard, who hired him to play in his touring band.
In 1980, Mr. Sonnier returned to his Cajun roots, as he would from time to time throughout his career, releasing a critically acclaimed album for Rounder Records and later achieving mainstream success in country circles with “Come On Joe.”
He also appeared in movies directed by Peter Bogdanovich, including “Mask” (1985), in which he played a biker named Sunshine, and “The Thing Called Love” (1993), a movie about country music, in which he played himself.
He is survived by his wife of more than 30 years, Bobbye (Weaver) Sonnier, and a son, Clayton.
Since childhood, Mr. Sonnier was attuned to the potential for cross-pollination among Cajun and other forms of American roots music.
“I loved the quality of the sound,” he said in the 2009 interview, referring to the Louisiana music he had grown up with. “It took me to a special place when I was a boy. Plus, I loved the Cajun flavor of the music. I saw that it brought joy and happiness to other people when I played, so I wanted to take it to a higher place by bringing in some Cajun, country, blues, rock, and jazz.”