On Saturday, January 25, 2014, the day before the live broadcast of the Grammy Awards, the late Clifton Chenier, Louisiana’s zydeco king, was presented a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award was accepted for Louisiana’s King of Zydeco by Mike Vital and C.J. Chenier at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles during the Special Merit Awards Ceremony and Nomineed Reception. Vital, Chenier’s nephew, and C.J. Chenier, Clifton’s son and longtime member of his Red Hot Louisiana Band, appeared together on stage to honor a man who “changed the history of music.”

Each shared brief memories about Clifton Chenier, who died in 1987, as film strips of the man rolled across a huge screen. Vital said, “When Clifton was 16, he fought and struggled to play that accordion. People laughed and joked about it for years. Somehow, he started doing private dances at my grandmother’s house. It grew into something big where they started doing dances on the road. Not knowing it would lead to a Grammy award, not knowing it would lead to a Lifetime Achievement Award. I’m just glad to accept this award and meet C.J.”

Clifton Chenier, an Opelousas, La., native and longtime resident of Lafayette, La., took the Creole accordion music of his youth, mixed it with R&B, blues and jazz, and presented it on an international stage, introducing the world to zydeco. A 1983 Grammy winner for the I’m Here LP, Chenier was inducted into the 2011 Grammy Hall of Fame for his album, “Bogalusa Boogie”.

C.J. Chenier called his father a brave pioneer. “I’ve been a musician all my life,” said C.J. Chenier. “I know what it takes to get here. Back in the ’40s, my father took the accordion and decided to hit the road. He wanted to play this music that nobody else knew about. He brought it to the world and to me, This award legitimizes zydeco by being recognized by the Recording Academy.”

Clifton Chenier joins other music greats such as Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson and Johnny Cash who have received Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is part of a 2014 induction class that includes the Beatles, the Isley Brothers, Kris Kristofferson, electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, Maud Powell and Armando Manzanero who also were honored at the event Saturday and were acknowledged during the live Grammy broadcast.

Terrance Simien, one of this year’s Grammy nominees and a previous Grammy winner, attended the awards ceremony. “It was unbelievable to see something that I thought I’d never see in my lifetime, but it was very well deserved,” Simien said. “Clifton Chenier belongs up there with those other monumental artists. I feel very proud to be a part of the legacy, to be playing Zydeco music.”

Photo by Herman Fuselier
Photo (1975) of Clifton Chenier by Philip Gould