Did you know Justin Wilson?

During Sunday night’s Bayou Justice live social media broadcast, someone asked if I knew Justin Wilson. That prompted me to tell the caller about a column we published three years ago and ended with me promising to retell the story this week.

Cajun chef and humorist Justin Wilson considered the father of Zydeco music a dear friend. Justin played one of the artist’s records for me in 1979. Years later, researching the singer’s murder, I uncovered the full story of their relationship.

In 1937, Independence-born Harry Wilson, Louisiana’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry, challenged his 19-year-old son to find a way to promote the sale of Louisiana rice worldwide. By mid-Summer, Justin E. Wilson, the vice president of a newly-organized rice festival, convinced actress Dorothy Lamour to reign as queen over the event. He hired crop-duster planes to shower a 5-couple wedding with rice on opening day, October 5, 1937.

It rained that day, but that’s a different story.

Crowley’s 1937 National Rice Festival brought together some of the state’s finest Cajun singers and musicians. Auditions started two months earlier. That’s when fiddler Dennis McGee introduced Justin Wilson to an accordionist, songwriter, and singer named Amédé (Am-a-dee) Ardoin.

Justin booked the duo for the rice festival but did not stop there. He offered to work as their agent after the festival. He booked them at fairs and festivals throughout south Louisiana, including the St. Helena Parish Fair in Greensburg, the South Louisiana State Fair in Donaldsonville, and the Tangipahoa Parish Fair in Loranger.

Justin Wilson had taken a significant risk.

Newspapers called Justin’s former home “Bloody Tangipahoa.” Located between two parishes known for Ku Klux Klan activity, it was a place where French-speaking black men did not perform at community fairs.

“Uncle Harry” Wilson, Justin’s father, knew the area well. He served two non-consecutive terms in the Louisiana House of Representatives, representing the Florida Parishes. He also fought to see the town of Independence incorporated.

Olivette Mintern Toadvin, Justin’s mother and a lady of French descent, lived much of her life in Tangipahoa Parish and knew first-hand the cruelties of racial bias.

Both warned their son not to bring Amédé into the Florida Parishes.

Despite the warnings, the act “Amede and Denus” saw great success in Loranger and at every fair they performed. As their agent, Justin could have found great wealth before becoming an entertainer in his own right.

However, as the 1937 fair season subsided, someone attempted to murder Amédé Ardoin on a Friday night, March 11, 1938—his 40th birthday. Although accounts conflict regarding how long he lived afterward, most reports say Amédé died vocally and mentally incapacitated two months later.

Baton Rouge planted a lemon tree in the singer’s honor in 2020.

According to legend, Amédé kept a lemon in his pocket during performances to preserve his voice. In 2018, the St. Landry Parish visitor’s center erected a life-sized statue of Amédé, holding a lemon.

Known for his accordion mastery, high voice, and lonesome lyrics about poverty, prison, and life as a Creole orphan, Amadee molded traditional French music into a unique sound that influenced future generations.

Today, the Grammy Awards include categories for both Cajun and Zydeco, the music Amédé Ardoin inspired.

Born near Eunice on March 11, 1898, historians remember Amédé as a little man barely five feet tall. He came from a family of sharecroppers, but relatives said Amédé preferred music to work in the cotton fields.

In the early 1930s, Amédé Ardoin and Dennis McGee recorded Amédé originals, the Eunice Two-Step, Midland Two-Step, Opelousas Waltz, Prison Blues, and other songs, now considered Cajun standards. This up-tempo, freewheeling “Crowley Blues” introduced a sound that music historians say evolved into Zydeco.

“People came in buggies from all over the state to see him,” Vincent Lejeune, Amédé’s friend, told author Michael Tisserand, writing his 1998 book, Kingdom of Zydeco. “Amédé could sing anything he wanted to. His voice would go through you. He could play some music; every woman in the dancehall would cry. They’d stop dancing. Sit down and wipe the tears. Oh, yes sir, he made the women bawl, and the men would hang their heads down,” Lejeune remembered.

Lejeune said Amédé’s ability to create songs about anyone instantly also made him famous off stage, which often landed him in trouble. Over the years, several dancehall patrons chased him away when off-the-cuff lyrics got too personal.

Lejeune and others believe that’s what got Amédé killed.

Despite South Louisiana’s persistent racial segregation, white and black audiences loved to hear him sing. However, those racial boundaries may have caught up with him one night in Eunice, Louisiana.

Although Amédé played private parties for over a decade, his primary income came from an upstairs dancehall called Abe’s Palace. In 1935, Abe Boudreaux sold the 2,000-seat dancehall to Didier Ardoin.

Didier, no relation to Amédé, did not provide Amédé the protection Abe afforded him. The night someone attacked Amédé, leaving him for dead in a roadside ditch, fellow musicians said someone at Abe’s Palace poisoned his drinks.

According to Dennis McGee and another musician named Douglas Chenier, Amédé refused a ride home after the show, saying he felt dizzy with a sick stomach. He hoped the walk home might clear his head.

As one story goes, that night on stage, Amédé asked a waiter for a towel to wipe sweat from his brow. Instead, the daughter of a wealthy white farmer provided her silk handkerchief. When the lady took her handkerchief back, several white men shouted racial slurs and threatened to beat him.

Dennis McGee went to his grave, insisting that this part of the story never happened. There were some boundaries, he said, black musicians knew not to cross if they wanted to live.

However, relatives found Amédé in a badly beaten ditch the following day, with tire tracks on his throat. Friends and relatives said Amédé eventually walked again but could not speak. He wandered through the countryside, no longer the musician and poet they once knew.

He died, Dennis McGee said, two months after the attack.

In 1963, following his success on the Ed Sullivan Show, Justin Wilson returned to St. Landry Parish. He asked Sheriff D. J. “Cat” Doucet to help him discover what happened to Amédé Ardoin.

Amédé’s relatives told the two men that Amédé died in a mental institution in Pineville and that he had been buried there in an unmarked grave.

Sheriff Doucet found the Central State Mental Hospital had no official record of Amédé’s residence or passing. However, a patient named “Amelie Ardoin” (Patient 13387) expired at the institution on May 30, 1941. This patient, possibly a woman, died 20 years older than Amédé.

Justin Wilson died in 2001, never learning who killed Amédé Ardoin or why.