Coco Robicheaux - Walking With The Spirit (Treme)
Added November 26th, 2011
From SpiritLand:
Coco Robicheaux, the son of Choctaw and Cajun parents, spent his early years between his native swamplands of rural Ascension Parish, Louisiana, and the French countryside. Forming his first band at 13, by age 15 he was playing New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street and signing his first record contract with the Mississippi J.B. Label in 1965. During the height of the San Francisco hippie era, he worked with the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic and Bill Graham’s Rock Medicine, then became a “rolling stone”, traveling across the country to South Padre, Key West, and finally returning to New Orleans.
Coco joined with Orleans Records in 1994 and released the highly acclaimed “Spiritland”. In 1998, “Louisiana Medicine Man” was awarded ‘Best Blues Album by a Louisiana Artist’ by Offbeat Magazine. He received three Big Easy Entertainment Awards’ nominations, including Best Blues Artist, the following year. In 2005, Mr. Robicheaux created his own label, Spiritland Records, and released ‘Yeah, U Rite!’.
Coco Robicheaux has performed at every New Orleans French Quarter Festival since 1995, for eleven New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festivals, and was featured in the Montreal and Nice Jazz Festivals. In addition to his New Orleans gigs, Coco has faithfully delivered his mojo soul in California, Colorado, Texas, Florida, New York, South Carolina, Australia, Germany, and all across France.
Coco is known for his stage presence and story-telling mastery, and has several stints in the acting world, from “Good Times San Francisco” to George Lucas’ “More American Graffiti”, and commercials for Popeye’s Chicken to indie horror movies and voice overs for the House of Blues.
New Orleans is home for Coco Robicheaux, and he is devoted to the city and its heritage. He contributed to N. O. Musicians’ Clinic’s fund raising project by performing gratis and donating “Louisiana Medicine Man” to the ‘Get You a Healin’ CD. The Legendary Tipitina’s showcases his artwork, a bronze bust of Professor Longhair, which was created with much love, hundreds pennies collected from friends, and a little help from the Spirit.
From WikiPedia:
Curtis John Arceneaux (October 25, 1947 – November 25, 2011)1 better known by the name Coco Robicheaux, is an American blues musician and artist, from Ascension Parish, Louisiana, United States.
He was born in California.1 Arceneaux took his stage name from a Louisiana legend, in which a naughty child called Coco Robicheaux, is abducted by a werewolf (Loup Garou or Rougarou). Also, the name ‘Coco Robicheaux’ is repeated in the song “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” from Dr. John the Night Tripper’s 1968 album, Gris-Gris.
Robicheaux appeared in the episode “Hotshots”, of the USA Network series Big Easy, playing a New Orleans musician named “Coco”, who had sold his soul to the devil. Two of Robicheaux’s songs were also featured in the episode, “Broken String” and “Spiritland”. Coco Robicheaux appeared as himself in the second episode of HBO’s Treme, first broadcast in the US on April 18, 2010.
Coco Robicheaux died in November 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the age of 64.
