[Ads-l] Antedating of "Zydeco" as Term for a Musical Genre

[Shapiro, Fred]

zydeco (OED, term for musical genre rather than dance, 1964)

1953 Informer and Texas Freeman 23 May 9 (ProQuest)  After the Rodeo there will be a Cowboy dance with music by the Zodico band.

1954 Call (Kansas City, Mo.) 21 May 19/1 (Newspapers.com)  Joe Bourgeois and the Club Jambalaya slipped in a surprise delight with their free bar dance with music by a bona fide Zodico Band headed by Willie Green.

1960 Houston Post 24 Apr. Part 4, Page 22, Column 6 (Newspapers.com)  Dudley Alexander appears with a three-piece dance band ... Called Zydeco music (from the French les haricots, snap-beans) they are typical of a rustic music which can be heard nightly in dozens of locations throughout the city and especially in the northwest quadrant dubbed "Techne City."

NOTE:  These are the earliest citations I have found for "zydeco" as a musical genre and for the earlier spelling "zodico" as a musical genre.  Musicologists have pointed to the use of "zydeco" in the liner notes of Mack McCormick's Treasury of Field Recordings (1960) as the first appearance of that spelling, but the Treasury of Field Recordings is not precisely dated.  The Informer and Texas Freeman was the oldest Black newspaper west of the Mississippi and the Kansas City Call was also a Black newspaper.

Fred Shapiro



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