Archive Files of Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco Musicians
Posted between 1999 and 2008

The Zozo Sisters: Adieu False Heart
 Ann Savoy and Linda Ronstadt

Photos of Ann Savoy were taken at Fest for All in Baton Rouge May 6, 2006, when she was performing with Ann Savoy and Her Sleepless Knights.

• The CD was released in July 2006 by Vanguard Records.

• Vanguard has some of the lyrics posted, but for all of the lyrics go to Linda Ronstadt's web site.

• Click here to go to the Savoy Music Center Web Site.

• Click here to go to LSUE's pages on Marc and Ann Savoy.

Note: Adieu False Heart received Grammy nominations in the "Best Traditional Folk Album" Category and the "Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical)" Category.

Delicate, tender, haunting, evocative, sensual and spiritual, spare and luxuriant, exotic and familiar: bittersweet—listeners will find many textures, many nuances in the remarkable collection of songs offered by Ann Savoy and Linda Ronstadt in their 2006 CD Adieu False Heart Linda Ronstadt, whom some of us still recall as a 1960s folk-rock singer with The Stone Poneys, has, in her career, ranged from singing a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to Mexican  canciones, receiving ten Grammy awards along the way. In this CD, she joins Ann Savoy, best known as a Cajun vocalist, to create music that defies easy classification but that is completely captivating.

For a fascinating glimpse at the origins of the CD in the evolving friendship between two women whose shared and complementary perspectives on music and life led to a very fulfilling musical collaboration, see the interview in New Orleans’ offbeat Magazine

Ronstadt says that the music they create together is unique, somewhere in between an art song and folk music. For Savoy, the human voice is the best musical instrument, directly expressing heart and soul in a cappella songs that Ronstadt loved when she heard recordings by Savoy and her all-female Cajun group, the Magnolia Sisters. They first met at the New Orleans Jazz Fest some 15 years ago, but they did not record together until Savoy  was working on the Cajun music tribute CD Evangeline Made and asked Ronstadt to sing harmony on “La Chanson d’une Fille de Quinze Ans,” a plaintive song of regret that anticipates some of the selections on Adieu False Heart.

The title cut, originally recorded by by Fiddlin' Arthur Smith and the Delmore Brothers on January 26, 1938, sets the mood for much of the rest of the CD: lyrics that arrive at clarity in the face of irrecoverable loss, acceptance without consolation other than the recognition of our shared fate.

But the entwined voices of Savoy and Ronstadt transform sadness and regret into music that somehow redeems the loss and lifts our spirits on songs like Richard Thompson’s “Burns’ Supper.” Savoy has lead vocals on seven songs (including “Burns’ Supper”), Ronstadt on four, and they trade leads on the final song.

Other songs include Thompson’s ‘King of Bohemia,” Julie Miller’s “I Can’t Get Over You,” John Jacob Niles’ “Go Away from My Window,” Bill Monroe’s “The One I Love Is Gone,” Kevin Welsh’s “Too Old to Die Young” (previously recorded by Moe Bandy), and the final song, the 1960s pop hit “Walk Away Renee,” with vocals that express the heartbreak in the lyrics, but, like everything else on this CD, provide compensation in beautiful harmonies.

Two of the French songs on the CD offer a counterpoint to the other bittersweet songs. “Parlez-moi d’amour” is a 1930s Parisian love song. “Plus tu tournes” is a joyous Creole song of motherly love.

“Marie Mouri,” with words written before the Civil War by a slave named Pierre from St. Martinville, was set to music by David Greely and recorded on the Mamou Playboys’ 2005 CD Dominos. The opening of the song contrasts the happy chirping of “chère ti zozo,” dear little bird (“zozo” is a Creole variant of “oiseau”), with Pierre’s inconsolable grief over the death of Marie.  The Zozo Sisters’ version is both poignant and beautiful.

The CD includes an Appalachian version of “Rattle My Cage” by Chas Justus, guitarist with the Acadiana group the Red Stick Ramblers. Justus plays guitar on several of the CD’s other songs, but not on his own.

Other Acadiana musicians are featured on the CD. Dirk Powell, the accordionist for Balfa Toujours, whose roots are in Appalachian music and who can play just about anything with strings or keys, strokes the upright bass on “King of Bohemia,” adds some accordion on “The One I Love Is Gone,” and on several cuts strums the fretless banjo, helping set the plaintive mood. Other Southwest Louisiana musicians include Kevin Wimmer, fiddler with Balfa Toujours and the Red Stick Ramblers, Sam Broussard, guitarist with the Mamou Playboys, Joel Savoy (Ann’s son) on guitar, Eric Frey, bassist with the Red Stick Ramblers, and Christine Balfa Powell (Dirk’s wife and member of Balfa Toujours and Bonsoir, Catin) on triangle. Part of the CD was recorded at Dirk Powell’s studio, The Cypress House on Bayou Teche, located in Parks near Breaux Bridge.

      Other instruments represented on the CD include mandolin, violin, violo, cello, dulcimer and bowed dulcimer, with the opening and closing notes performed by Andrea Zonn on the resophonic viola.

      Though only a couple of songs on the CD are drawn directly from the Cajun and Creole cultures that are the focus of LSUE’s web pages, all of the songs  have an essential honesty and directness that make the music compelling and rewarding.

              –David Simpson, LSUE, August 7, 2006

Click here for a long story on Ann Savoy and the CD by Ron Thibodeaux in the Feb. 10, 2007, New Orleans Times-Picayune (link still good in Jan. 2009).