Link Davis - Laissez Les Bon‐Ta‐Ru‐La (Let The Good Times Roll)

Released Friday 5th November
All pre orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that date. 

Link Davis may not have been born a Cajun, but no one presented as
romantic a snapshot of dyed‐in‐the‐wool South Louisiana life as this blues
shouting rocker from Northeast Texas. In fact, he so embraced the culture
in lifestyle and song that in the final analysis, Davis is considered as much a
card‐carrying Acadian as those whose ancestors made the exiled journey
from Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century. But while his popular 1953
rendition of the Cajun anthem Big Mamou on OKeh Records helped open
the door to this often‐closed and clannish culture, his 1949 take on Roy
Brown’s Good Rockin’ Tonight (retitled Have You Heard The News), issued
on the tiny Gold Star imprint, painted a far more accurate portrait of his
musical personality, which began brewing on shellac in the late thirties.
Link’s chosen instruments, fiddle and tenor sax, perfectly embodied his
multi‐faceted musical vision. They might have seemed completely at odds
with one another anywhere else in the United States, but in the Golden
Triangle of South Louisiana and East Texas they dovetailed like shrimp and
okra, saluting the entire genre‐melding arc of Gulf Coast music. And while
most musicians would have been satisfied to stand on the circumstance of
their one hit, the ever‐restless, always‐creative Davis gravitated straight to
rock ’n’ roll once his major label contract expired. Label‐hopping from
Nucraft to Sarg to Starday, Link laid down the unique sound he’d been
developing for well over a decade in the clubs of the Golden Triangle — an
amalgamation of Cajun, blues and rockabilly that culminated in 1958 with
the driving, jiving rocker Bon‐Ta‐Ru La (Let The Good Times Roll), recorded
for Houston’s Allstar Records.
A noted session man, his honking sax buzzed to the top of the charts on
both the Big Bopper’s Chantilly Lace and Johnny Preston’s Running Bear,
while his newly‐formed four‐piece band the Cajuns continued to record for
Allstar, as well as other local labels such as Al’s, D, Kool and Link’s own
Tanker and Western concerns. It was on these post‐Starday sides that Davis
found the freedom to pursue the freewheeling approach that he employed
in the nightclubs, and the lean, mean sound of the Cajuns was buoyed by
brilliant guitarists Junior Beck and Joey Long, as well as San Antonio Fender
bassist Little Sammy Jay and even Link’s teenage son, Link Davis Jr. The

result was a Gulf Coast musical gumbo of the highest order, featuring first
class rockers (Permit Blues, Airliner, Come Dance With Me), bayou blues
(Rice & Gravy), swamp ballads (Visions, Memories Of You) and storming sax
instrumentals (Beatle Bug), all delivered in the distinctly larger‐than‐life
Davis style.
The fact that Link was forty years old when rock ’n’ roll hit the national
scene — and yet he took to it like a duck to water, should have been no
surprise to his many fans, or anyone even vaguely aware of him; he’d been
playing it long before it had a neatly‐sellable name. This collection,
featuring liner notes penned by longtime Link Davis devotee and Gulf Coast
music historian Michael Hurtt, zeroes in on the decade that made him the
irrepressible musical force‐of‐nature that we know and love today.
Track listings:
10‐inch LP, Side A)
01 Come Dance With Me
02 Permit Blues
03 Grasshopper Rock
04 Johnny Be Good
05 Don't Big Shot Me
06 Bon‐Ta‐Ru‐La (Let The Good Times Roll)
10‐inch LP, Side B)
07 Sixteen Chicks
08 Airliner
09 Rice And Gravy
10 Trucker From Tennessee
11 You Show Up Missing
12 Grasshopper
Compact Disc (CD):
01 Come Dance With Me ‐ Link Davis
02 Permit Blues ‐ Link Davis
03 Grasshopper Rock ‐ Link Davis
04 Johnny Be Good ‐ Link Davis
05 Don't Big Shot Me Link Davis
06 Bon‐Ta‐Ru‐La (Let The Good Times Roll) ‐ Link Davis
07 Sixteen Chicks ‐ Link Davis

08 Airliner ‐ Link Davis
09 Rice And Gravy ‐ Link Davis
10 Trucker From Tennessee ‐ Link Davis
11 You Show Up Missing ‐ Link Davis
12 Grasshopper ‐ Link Davis
13 Have You Heard The News (Good Rockin' Tonight) ‐ Link Davis
14 Allons A Lafayette ‐ Link Davis
15 Rice And Gravy Blues ‐ Link Davis
16 Beatle Bug ‐ Link Davis
17 Visions ‐ Link Davis
18 Joe Turner ‐ Link Davis
19 Ballad Of Jole Blon ‐ Link Davis
20 Rice And Gravy Boogie ‐ Link Davis
21 Memories With You ‐ Link Davis
22 Jogging ‐ Link Davis
23 San Antonio Blues (vocals: Link Davis) ‐ Cliff Bruner & His Texas
Wanderers
24 Texas Swing ‐ Link Davis
25 Slippin' And Slidin' Sometimes ‐ Link Davis
26 Big Mamou ‐ Link Davis