1) Earl PEYROUX : le cousin créole cuisinier venu du Poitou vers 1740

On a retrouvé notre "cousin" créole cuisinier (ou est-ce celui de Maïté version USA ?) sur le web aux adresses suivantes:
http://pelicanpub.com/cookbooks/earl-peyroux.htm et http://uwf.edu/tprewitt/sofood/cajun.htm

"Earl Peyroux's 'Gourmet Cooking' is a fascinating and eminently practical book that distills a lifetime of culinary exploration into easy-to-prepare and delicious recipes spiced with the author's informed commentary."

Stanley Dry, editor, Louisiana Cookin'

Celebrity chef Earl Peyroux has taught millions of viewers the joys of "Gourmet Cooking" through more than 600 episodes of his national PBS television show and six companion cookbooks. Now, for the first time available in stores, Peyroux offers a combination of show favorites and never-before-seen dishes designed to sate the appetites of his most ardent fans.

Part of the appeal of his easy-to-follow recipes lies in his broad culinary repertoire. Peyroux incorporates techniques he learned from cooking with his mother in New Orleans, living along the Northern Gulf Coast, and attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.

Earl Peyroux's "Gourmet Cooking" has aired on PBS stations since 1977, but his passion for food dates back much further. Peyroux learned the benefits of good cooking and good eating as a young boy in the culinary capital of the United States: New Orleans. Since then, he has traveled throughout the world, both learning and teaching all he can about gourmet cooking.

TIME WELL SPENT WITH EARL PEYROUX
Interview on 7 December 1996 by Cindy Beggs and Bridget Gipson

Preface

Earl Peyroux was born in New Orleans in 1924. His ancestors came from France and moved directly to New Orleans in 1740. Earl began his cooking show, Gourmet Cooking, in 1977, which aired nationally in 1982. In 1996, he retired from his cooking show for health reasons; he is currently at work on his next cookbook. The following information is transcribed from a very candid interview with Chef Peyroux. Earl's thoughts, feelings, and desire to keep his tradition alive and thriving for all of us to appreciate and enjoy truly describes him as an 'ethnic hero'.
 

"There were Acadians who left France and went to Canada. They lived in Canada until they were exiled because they wouldn't swear allegiance to the English Crown. They came down the river and settled in southwest Louisiana and in and around New Orleans. Those are called Cajuns or Acadians (from a region of the same name in France). Then there were the who left France and came directly to New Orleans. Today, these groups are known mainly as the Creole, whereas those that came from Canada were called Acadians, shortened to 'Cajun'. The third group of people were Acadians directly from France. These people were very poor and had trouble even existing."

"One of my relatives that came over here was Henry Peyroux. He was apparently a diplomat involved with the Spanish Government. He convinced the King of Spain to pay and to get the King of France to permit those Acadians still in France to come to Louisiana. They came and settled above New Orleans on both sides of the river. Of course, when they got there they joined the Acadians that came from Canada. So there were three sources: there were the Acadians who came from Nova Scotia down the (Mississippi) River, there were Acadians still in France that were brought to Louisiana by the King of Spain, and there were who primarily came directly from France to New Orleans. The immigration was brought about by a number of things, including economic conditions in France and affluent people speculating about the New World. Additionally, there was a lot of promotion, fund raising, and connivery regarding Louisiana. John Law, a banker in France, who promoted Louisiana as a paradise. This promotion brought a lot of people over to the New World looking for a new way of life. Many people invested in land. A lot of people came with money and acquired land grants. They established large plantations and so forth. Now of course, with all of that you had slavery; slaves were being brought from Africa. These slaves made the mainstay of the economics of the area because they did all the work. They worked the farms and the plantations, and served the aristocracy. These people were clearly divided from the upper class. The economy in Louisiana grew that way.

"Everyone lived in the swamp; even New Orleans was underwater practically all the time in those days! Many Frenchmen got land grants from the government and developed huge plantations up the river toward Baton Rouge and St. James, Louisiana. Some of my immigrant ancestors had property up the river and also in New Orleans."

"New Orleans is called the "Crescent City" because the city was built on the crescent of the Mississippi River. Once you walked out of what is now the French Quarter, you crossed what is Rampart Street and you were now out in the boondocks. People ultimately bought that land and developed it. My ancestor, M.J. Gabriel Peyroux, the pharmacist, lived in New Orleans with his wife. They had land up around Bayou St. John. Bayou St. John was the connector between the River and Lake Ponchartrain, so a lot of supplies to keep the city going came from various places through Lake Ponchartrain down Bayou St. John, which was an income producing property. Later, he dismantled and rebuilt this home on the corner of Dumaine and Burgundy. It is now a bed & breakfast in the historical district.

"The Peyroux family are Creoles. We are not Cajuns because we did not come from Acadia through Nova Scotia or directly from France by virtue of the King of Spain. My family came from Poitou, a province in France. The Peyroux family was very prominent in the pre-civil war era. This war ended the South's glorious economy and the Peyroux family literally went from riches to rags. They no longer had the slave help to keep up the work on the plantations and they lost their land and had to move in town."

On moving to Pensacola:

"My family stayed in Louisiana until my generation. I left 35 years ago. Living in New Orleans got more and more complicated. I got sand in my shoes and I moved to Pensacola."

When I asked Earl what he liked to cook most, he replied, "food!". Two favorites prepared at home are: red beans & rice, and breaded veal cutlets. The Creole culture had affected Earl's way of life. In Louisiana, "you grow up in a very special culture that doesn't exist anywhere else in this country". It is quite obvious that Earl Peyroux is very proud of his Louisiana heritage, reflected in his cooking show, cookbooks, and life at home. We conducted the interview in his office at home, where from a window you can view a beautiful courtyard reminiscent of the French Quarter. Two walls of the office hold a large library of books, another is covered with plaques bearing names of famous cooking schools. Letters from viewers with requests for cookbooks and more shows are stacked upon the desk. Never tiring of the conversation, Earl quickly turned to his favorite subject.

"... Cajun and Creole cooking have become the rage throughout the country. Unfortunately, I think it has been 'bastardized' because of the misinformation that has been passed out. But anyway, what is Creole and Cajun cooking? They tend to be similar but are really very distinct styles. They are similar in that they both exist in Louisiana and draw upon the same resources of the area, such as the seafood and vegetables. When the Acadians came down the river, they lived out in the swamp, and were a very closed group of people. They had been persecuted so much in the past that when they finally got someplace where they could live and practice their ideas and religion, they kept the outside world out as much as possible. So southwest Louisiana, which is known as Cajun country, became almost an enclave. But, who were these people? They were farmers, fishermen, and trappers; people who earned their existence by the sweat of their brow. They were not sophisticated in the sense that they didn't come from the aristocracy of France. So their cooking evolved out the food ways they brought with them and also the resources available to them in the area."

"Creole cooking is the outgrowth of the style of life and cooking that developed in Louisiana from the French expatriates. Some of them were not too highborn people. There were people that were turned out of jails to colonize the area, and those who were escaping the law and moved over. There were also a large group of people who came here as speculators. They brought with them a culture from the bourgeois."

"Creoles lived in a city as opposed to the Cajuns who lived in the country. Creoles were aristocratic people and developed a rather sophisticated society in Louisiana. Likewise, Creole foods enjoyed a lot more finesse than the country (Cajun) cooking. Cajun cooking has a lot more ruggedness indicative of the lifestyle of the people... In this century, these two cultures have blended a lot because of increased mobility and integration."

"The great champion of this blending in Paul Prudhomme, who popularized Cajun and Creole cooking. Unfortunately a lot of what Paul has done has been taken by others and 'bastardized'. For example, Paul created a dish called "Blackened Red Fish". That's nothing more that a piece of fish dipped in butter and then dipped in a bunch of seasonings and cooked on an extremely hot skillet. It smokes when they do it. Now, that's Paul. Now, you go elsewhere to restaurants and you get everything 'smoked' or 'blackened' from hamburgers, to chicken and pork chops. They are no longer cooked properly; they are just thrown on a grill in some restaurant and come out and are usually too damn hot (peppery) than they should be. It's a mistaken notion that if it's Creole or Cajun it's gotta be hot. That's not true. It should be spicy, not hot! Creole/Cajun food are two different things with similarities. So, I would like to make that distinction between the two!"

On changing food ways and modern food production:

People like Earl Peyroux keep the tradition of Creole and Cajun cooking alive in America today. Earl's next project could possibly be a cookbook of what he calls the 'endangered species', certain recipes and dishes that were indigenous to cultural areas disappearing due to modern cooking methods and lifestyles.

"... an example (of this change) is here in Pensacola on the local level. When I first came here 35 years ago there was a salad that was extremely popular. All the old timers and the Navy people and even those that had come here like me knew of it. It was readily available; you could buy it in delicatessens and everybody made it at home. It's called gaspacie -- that's a salad made up of green onions, tomatoes, andcucumbers. One version used vinegar dressing and hardtack. Hardtack is a very hard biscuit that was the bread of travelers when it took two months to cross the ocean. To eat this bread, you had to break it up and soften it with some liquid. Now it's pretty hard to find hardtack today, and most Pensacolians do not know what gaspacie is. And yet it's a classic. It's only in this area that you would ever find this recipe. Now how did gaspacie come about? Well, the colonials here in Pensacola used to make a soup called gazpacho, which uses the same ingredients (cucumbers, tomatoes, and green onions). What they would do is take the hardtack and dip it in the soup to soften the bread so that it was edible. Over time that generated into a salad; less liquid and more hard tack. Now this has disappeared! So that's one of the 'endangered species' recipes that I would like to write a cookbook about. There are others, but that's the one that comes to mind."

"As our culture has evolved we've sacrificed taste and quality in our food. When I was a youngster, we didn't eat a lot of frozen foods. We had some meats and a few things like that. What I'm driving at is that we ate strawberries only when strawberries were in bloom, in the summer. We ate apples only when apples were in season. You might say it's better today, because you can buy apples at the store any time. The trouble is that apples don't taste like apples did 50 or 60 years ago. Strawberries don't taste the same either, because we have hybridized these fruits to produce out of season. This sacrifices taste. Everybody that I know that goes to Europe comes back and says the food is so much better there. We have more abundance in this country; there is no question about that. In this country most of our garden is California and Florida. In order to ship produce from California, it must be picked before it is ripened. Then, produce is often treated with chemicals, causing them to ripen up. The trouble is this procedure only makes them look better; they don't taste better. In France, when they pick something it's only got one day to get where it's going. The whole country is the size of Texas. So I can ship something to the south of France up to Paris in one day. In this country it takes 3 to 5 days to get stuff from California to the East Coast, or vice versa from Florida to the West Coast."

Produced by Yves Beauvais and bassist/arranger Greg Cohen (Tom Waits's collaborator for nearly 20 years, Victoria Williams, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Woody Allen), the album features a cast of top players, among them Atlantic labelmates Cyrus Chestnut (piano), Regina Carter (violin), and James Carter (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), along with guitarist Vernon Reid, drummer Leon Parker, sought-after New York guitarist Marc Ribot (Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull), and others. Madeleine's entrancing vocals are expertly served by emotive playing and rich, varied instrumentation, including marimba, Dobro, harmonium, Hammond B3 organ, accordion, harpsichord, and banjo.

"'DREAMLAND' applies a cosmopolitan sense to vintage blues tunes and their offshoots, such as torch songs and country ballads," wrote Billboard in a recentcover story. "Heard from Peyroux's perspective and aided by Cohen's witty arrangements, they sound utterly enchanting and thoroughly modern."

Madeleine's impressive skill as a songwriter emerges on her three "DREAMLAND" originals: "Always A Use"; "Hey Sweet Man," a Dobro/vocal piece written on a Paris subway; and "Dreamland," which she wrote shortly after leaving the busking life. "It was the beginning of 1993 and I had a lot of things on my mind," says Madeleine of the album's bright, hopeful title track. "One way of making progress towards getting myself together was to write that song."

In addition to her original compositions, "DREAMLAND"'s material is drawn from such diverse sources as Edith Piaf ("La Vie En Rose"), Patsy Cline ("Walkin' After Midnight"), Fats Waller ("I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter"), the Ziegfeld Follies ("Was I?"), Billie Holiday ("(Getting Some) Fun Out Of Life"), and Bessie Smith ("Muddy Water," "Reckless Blues," "Lovesick Blues"). "She's one of my idols," says Madeleine of Smith. "She sang songs with a woman's character, and confirmed the fact that women have something to say in their own right. Just the sound of her voice tells you that."

Born in Athens, Georgia and raised between Southern California, Brooklyn, and Paris, Peyroux was performing by age 15, when she began busking through the City of Light. "I started out just wanting to get out of the house," says Madeleine. "So I took my guitar and learned some music." She was quickly drawn to the Latin Quarter, where the lively jazz scene and community of street performers formed a natural magnet for a curious and eager young musician.

Madeleine had moved from Brooklyn to Paris in 1987, when her mother took a job with an international bank. "Back then, I had this idea that I was going to finish high school, go to college, and get a degree &emdash; both of my parents had, and that was my idea of the future," she says. "I didn't really question it, although I didn't want to do it that much. I didn't want to live up to that sort of expectation... and I didn't."

By 1989, Madeleine was acting as the hat-passer for a group of busking musicians called the Riverboat Shufflers. Eventually, she convinced the band to let her sing. It was then that she first stepped on to a tarmac stage to sing the only song in her repertoire... "Georgia." Soon after, Madeleine found herself singing a cappella in an impromptu street corner audition for The Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band. "The leader of the band came up to me on the street and said, 'Okay, sing a song for me right now,'" says Peyroux. "So I sang 'Jeepers Creepers' and just snapped my fingers." She was 16-years- old.

Madeleine spent the next three years touring across Europe in a cramped brown Mercedes with the otherwise all-guy troupe of Paris-based buskers. "There was so much stuff in that car," says Madeleine, rolling her eyes. "There were four or five of us plus a wash tub, mouse amps, a trumpet, two guitars, and all the duffel bags and sleeping bags." With Madeleine playing wash tub bass and singing, The Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band would perform 1930's-era revue sets, typically consisting of numbers by Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others.

For Madeleine, many of the songs on "DREAMLAND" come with their own separate side stories and unique interpretative viewpoints, directly tied to her busking days. "Songs I learned from different friends will always be associated with those street musicians I met in Paris," she says. "With a song like 'Walkin' After Midnight,' there's more to it because you've lived it. And if you're playing a blues song on the street, you have more to sing the blues about than if you were sitting at home trying to make sense of a piece of sheet music. It's a whole other world."

This is her story: Born in Athens Georgia then living between Brooklyn and Paris, she began performing on the streets of Paris at age fifteen. When she was 16 she had an impromptu audition for the Lost and Wandering Blues and Jazz Band. The leader came up to her and said "Okay sing a song for me right now". She sang Jeepers Creepers and that was the start of her stint touring Europe with the band. With them she performed numbers by Fats Waller, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald among others. I asked her what it was like being the only woman stuck with a bunch of guys? Was there a boys' club feeling or was she one of the boys?

MP: It's not easy being a girl on the road with guys, I mean if you want to go to the bathroom you have to really hide and you sleep in the room with them and... but I mean it could be alot worse, I mean they weren't mean or anything. They were all nice guys and they wouldn't take advantage of me. I was in situations worse than that to get taken advantage of, but I mean, not with the band. I guess it means I'm a little more used to the way guys do their thing. (Laughs)

Next I asked if she felt female singers get respect from male musicians.

MP: Well I wouldn't want to make it a personal statement...

DL: Go ahead, make it a personal statement.

MP: It's a known joke that instrumentalists say things about singers, but that's old hat. I think that some people are very critical of singers because they think it's alot easier, but there are also quite a few instrumentalists that can't sing. I feel very strongly about demanding respect and I also feel strongly about giving that same respect to the musicians I play with... I mean musicians don't get to play what they want. Very often they're told to play this or play that so I think it has to be a mutual thing.

Madeleine Peyroux shows that respect when she talks about the people who played and produced this record. It is rife with excellent players who contribute to its wonderful old time sound. The record is produced by Yves Beauvais and bassist/arranger Greg Cohen (Tom Waits' collaborator for nearly 20 years, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Woody Allen). Also included are Marc Ribot, on guitar, James Carter on sax, Vernon Reid, Cyrus Chesnut and many others.

Of course the point of all this is " The Voice." When I first heard Madeleine's voice my jaw dropped. How could a 22-year old white girl sound like this? It's really eerie. She sounds so much like Billie Holliday that it's scary. Her voice is so mature, her phrasing is impeccable, it is a phenomenon and it must be heard to be believed. The record consists mostly of cover songs but contains three strong originals. Madeleine does a wonderful version of the Patsy Cline classic Walking After Midnight. The arrangement is brilliant in it's simplicity. It is mostly just bass, guitar and a pokey hop-a-long percussion part that gives the tune an old time western feeling. I asked Madeleine if she had to change her singing style to sing different kinds of music.

MP: Well not really except when it comes to French singing (Ms. Peyroux does a version of Edith Piaf's, La Vie en Rose) which is very difficult for me. It's a totally different type of thing, because when you are doing French you are using a language that doesn't have anything to do with intonation. It's all monotone and drone so that every word has to have a whole lot of passion put into it. I speak it fluently so I try to look at it from a fluent speaker's point of view. I try to take the song in context so it can become something that can be understood by anybody who understands French. I think the most important thing is that people understand what I am saying and that I'm articulate. Other than that I don't think there should be any difference as long I'm getting the message across.

That she does, especially on songs like (Getting Some) Fun Out of Life, a Billie Holiday standard. This is done with such grace and restraint and emotional connection you would swear she is channeling Lady Day herself. The thing about it is Madeleine Peyroux doesn't sound like she is imitating Billie Holiday, she sounds like Billie Holiday -- but with enough of her own style to make it her own. She also gets the most out of two Bessie Smith blues songs, Reckless Blues and Lovesick Blues. Bessie Smith is another of Madeleine's idols and she does these blues numbers the way they are supposed to be done. The thing that amazes about this record is that it seems like it could have been recorded in the thirties. It captures the spirit of the music of that time without imitating in a fake way. It's the spirit of the players, the arrangements and, of course, the singer converging to create something that sounds new yet old at the same time. I realize that sounds vague, but if you listen to the record I think you will understand what I mean.

Dreamland includes three original compositions that are, surprisingly, not infused with the same angst as some of the covers on the record. The first, Hey Sweet Man, harks back to the old time blues style; if you didn't know Peyroux wrote it, you would swear it was a Bessie Smith song. The other songs, Always a Use, and the title track, Dreamland, are more in a folk vein but still solid compositions. I will be interested in listening to her next album to see if she includes more of her own music.

Madeleine plans to be on the road for a while so you should look out for her in your local music paper. She is a unique talent and has the kind of voice that comes along only rarely. When you consider she is only 22, it is kind of scary how much potential she has (if the recording industry can only figure out what niche to put her in). I asked Madeleine what was the best and worst thing about being on the road:

MP: The best thing is that you get to travel and the worst thing is that you don't get to stay very long.