Doug Kershaw: Crazy Cajun Fiddler
This article originally appeared on Circus, April 1970
DOUG KERSHAW, before his current tour was primarily known as "the guy who was on the Johnny Cash Show the same night that Dylan was on." It is definitely impressive that a performer could stand out on a show with such acts as Cash and Dylan but the impact and talent of Doug Kershaw goes far beyond his television presence.
The first impression Kershaw makes is that of a freak. He appears from nowhere, leaping onto the stage and singing 'Diggy Lo', a Cajun chant which blows minds. Kershaw plays the fiddle the way Jimi Hendrix plays guitar, frantically, and so fast that you begin to think he can't really play at all until he slows down for a few notes of total musical purity before resuming the superspeed pace. Standing with his legs apart, he plays the fiddle like a man sawing a piece of endless wood. His whole stage act is very unpredictable. He doesn't travel with any particular band, picking up sidemen wherever he happens to be.
Doug embodies all of the contradictions of most country and western singers carried to the tenth degree. On one hand he is sentimental and patriotic. He refers to the playing of his 'Louisiana Man' at the time of the Apollo moon shot as "the greatest honor that could be paid to me because I would have settled for making Louisiana history but that touched the whole world. Before that was played I never even listened to the song that much myself." He also speaks very affectionately of his home, "the Bayou" and of his family.
On the other hand, however, he is a joker onstage. "You mean to say that that wasn't funny?" he'll ask if people don't laugh. At one point a girl was taking a photograph of him and he snatched the camera and said "now let me take one of you." At one recent performance at the Bitter End he was having trouble, breaking strings and generally working himself into a bad show. "Well look," he said finally, "once something has started bad, you can never make it good, so I'm gonna start all over again. Introduce me again will you?" The Bitter End staff was nonplussed, but luckily Penny Arcade, a local New York actress who happened to be in the audience, shouted out "INTRODUCING DOUG KERSHAW" and out he bounded again, playing the set from the beginning. Kershaw had his off nights but never a dull one. He is one of the realest performers in the pop music world today. With an infantile enthusiasm and a huge talent he has a truly irresistable charm.
"Dope is anything you try twice and like" said Kershaw one night and it is a clue to his philosophy. He said "you know everything I've ever done I've done by saying I'd do it first and backing myself into a corner so I had to do It. Three years ago I said it would take me three years to get on the Sullivan show and I just got it confirmed twenty seven days before my deadline. It's like the people in the club. I kept telling them that I was great. I kept telling them that they were going to like me and eventually they believed me. You see what I mean?"
Kershaw started playing the fiddle when he was five years old and around that time he acquired a self belief that pulled him through what must have been some pretty rough times. He used to play his violin in front of the swamp: "a swamp is the toughest audience there is – it don't laugh and it don't clap – it just sits there." He still can't read music and he still plays the same fiddle – a fiddle that has been in his family for six generations. Kershaw has a tendency to exaggerate that is incredible. One night he talked about the fiddle saying it had been around for six generations saying that must make it four or five hundred years old. "Those are pretty long generations Doug", someone pointed out. In any case he cherishes that fiddle, repairs it himself as he always has, and treats it like a part of his body. "In Louisiana we had to build a tool before we could fix it – sometimes we had to build the tools to make the tools." But without his fiddle he is depressed. "You know it sounds ridiculous but I really feel uncomfortable without it." He is now thirty eight years old having enjoyed the wealth and respect he deserves only within the last couple of years. He lives in Nashville in a house that he built "without any bath tubs. I put in showers but it just didn't occur to me to put in bathtubs." He evidently was helped to success by Johnny Cash who he has toured with, who put him on his TV show who he speaks of highly if mysteriously and whom he resembles in some of his style.
Kershaw is as jaded as the hardest core Nashville resident. An acquaintance who has dealt with him in business says simply: "I don't like people who don't pay their bills." He has a facade not unlike Cash's filled with expensive vulgar clothes and long, well taken care of hair. But this is no more than a facade. It is the union card that enables him a happy life in Nashville where the jungle gets a bit thick and the Grand Old Opry has no serious competition.
An inherent part of the whole Kershaw story is his relationship with his family. 'Louisiana Man' gives a sketch of the family. The fact is, that at the age of six, Kershaw found his Louisiana man dead from suicide. Talking about it still brings tears to his eyes but Kershaw has learned to speak his feelings openly and fight when he had to. He was staying at the Hotel Americana and went downstairs to the restaurant. On arrival he was told that he couldn't eat there because he had no tie. "You know" he said, "as long as I'm paying $40 a day, don't you think that you could put a note up in the room announcing this. My dear I have hundreds of ties but I don't want to go all the way upstairs." Even success holds back certain privileges.
Kershaw talks about his mother ceaselessly. Her name was Rita and he tells of the way she used to yell at him with chilling humor and incredible photographic reproduction. "Mama always used to say these things at me – it loses something in the translation (Cajuns are French speaking southerners) but she used to yell these curses at me all the time.
"You know the one thing in nature that you can't kill is a tree. A tree doesn't have to go anywhere and it grows to be the biggest thing in the world. Its roots grow down and they're what holds the earth together and it grows up and it never dies. Even if it gets chopped down it lives on in tables or as paper. You'd do all right in the country if you can talk to the trees." Doug Kershaw, human being who happens to play the fiddle in a way that would do Stradivarius proud, goes around the country turning people on wherever he goes. He needs no fanfare – just go and see him and you'll see a star. His album The Cajun Way (Warner Bros.) unfortunately doesn't capture much of the magic although it is a useful index of his talent.
