Savoy a key component of La. music

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Sep 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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EUNICE - Ann Savoy performs Cajun music with the Savoy Family Band, the Savoy Doucet Band and the Magnolia Sisters. Marriage to musician and accordion-maker Marc Savoy brought her to southwest Louisiana in 1977. She arrived just in time to document the region’s classic Cajun and Creole musicians in her book, Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People.

As the Grammy-nominated producer of the pop-star-filled Evangeline Made: A Tribute to Cajun Music, Savoy brought Cajun music to new audiences. A follow-up disc, Creole Bred, features Creole and zydeco music performed by mainstream stars.

Despite Savoy’s deep affection for Cajun music, it’s not the only music she loves. She got a second Grammy nomination last year for Adieu False Heart, a mostly non-Cajun project with her longtime friend, Linda Ronstadt.

The singer-guitarist’s recent CD, If Dreams Come True, credited to Ann Savoy and Her Sleepless Knights, features blues and jazz standards of the kind her parents, Mildred Allen Robinson and Thomas Wilson Allen, listened to when she was a child in Richmond, Va.

If Dreams Come True includes the Benny Goodman title track; Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers’ “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” plus songs popularized by Sophie Tucker, early blues star Bessie Smith and French singers of the early 20th century.

Nothing on If Dreams Come True is Cajun music, but the CD still gets categorized as such by mainstream media.

“A lot of the reviewers think it’s a Cajun record,” Savoy said at her home, a nearly 100-year-old house near Eunice, on land that’s been in her husband’s family for some 200 years. “I’ve made Cajun records, but this is another kind of music.”

Savoy’s son, Joel — a fiddler, record producer and label owner — encouraged his mother to record the non-Cajun songs he’d heard her perform so often at home.

“He said, ‘Mom, you’ve gotta record this stuff.’ Because he loves it, too.”

Joel Savoy produced If Dreams Come True, recording it on analog tape at his Studio Savoy Faire. The Sleepless Knights band includes Joel, guitar and violin; Wilson (another son), piano; and Red Stick Ramblers members Kevin Wimmer, fiddle; Eric Frey, upright bass; Chas Justus, guitar; and Glenn Fields, drums; plus an import from Washington, D.C., guitarist Tom Mitchell. 
Louisiana style, the musicians had a grand time making If Dreams Come True.

“Every day they’d be cooking these giant feasts,” Savoy recalled. “At night everybody would sit by the fire and jam.”

But the sessions weren’t always a party, thanks to Joel Savoy.

“He’s a strict producer with strong opinions and good judgment,” Ann Savoy said. “I think he can become a great producer.”