Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

H ARRY
C HOATES
Harry Henry Choates was born in Louisiana, on December 26, 1922, and
moved to Port Arthur with his mother in the 1930s. Choates had no formal
education, preferring the streets and listening to recordings played on
jukeboxes in bars. By the age of twelve he played the fiddle for tips, and
eventually learned to play the accordion, standard guitar, and steel guitar
as well.
Early in the 1940s Choates played with Cajun music bands led by Leo
Soileau and Leroy (“Happy Fats”) LeBlanc, and in 1946 wrote and recorded
Jole Blon, which became a theme song for Cajun music. Choates’ high-pitched
“aaiee” vocal call became his signature. An alcoholic, Choate sold the rights to
Jole Blon for $100 and a bottle of whiskey.
Choates’ band, The Melody Boys, played in bars and honky tonks and
recorded dozens of songs, though none achieved the success of Jole Blon. He
died in jail in Austin, Texas, on July 17, 1951.
Choates is credited with merging traditional Cajun music with country and
swing styles, and the popularization of accordion and fiddle sounds associated
with Cajun music.
❖
Harry Choates, known as the
“Godfather of Cajun Music.” Choates
wrote and played Jole Blon, known as
the Cajun national anthem.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
established facilities in 1975 with 385 students;
Sam Monroe served as president. In 1999 the
Texas legislature designated the institution as
Lamar State College—Port Arthur, a separate
entity under the Texas State University System’s
Board of Regents. By 1990 enrollment exceeded
2,000 students and approached 3,000 students
by the end of that decade.
South Jefferson County hosted the most
heavily unionized labor force in Texas for much
of the twentieth century. Locals of both Congress
of Industrial Organizations and American
Federation of Labor affiliates constituted a
majority of the work force in oil, chemical, and
other industrial plants. Labor strikes occurred
periodically, sometimes as jurisdictional disputes
between CIO and AFL locals and always to
obtain better wages and working conditions for
members. Long-time residents remember
particularly violent labor unrest in the 1950s,
but all strikes generated hard and hurt feelings
for both management and labor. In 1975 and
1979, literally thousands of workers were either
on strike or locked out of the Gulf and Texas
Company refineries. In contrast, by the end of
the century, area refineries and chemical plants
began laying off workers no longer needed
because of automation or because much of the
work had shifted to other areas.
The downsizing of industry resulted in
closings for many main-street retail businesses
dependent on customers with good paying
industrial jobs for their own success. The
development of shopping malls and convenience
stores also drew customers from more traditional,
downtown merchants. Too, even when industries
continued to operate with reduced labor forces,
they did so under new management. For example,
U.S. Industrial Chemicals bought out ARCO and
Chevron USA bought Gulf in rounds of corporate
raids, take overs and mergers that continued into
the twenty-first century; Gulf eventually became
Clark and later Valero, an example of Wall Street
play common at the end of the millennium and
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Unemployment reached twenty-five percent in
Port Arthur in 1986, and the city’s population
dropped from a high of more than 66,000 in
1960s to approximately 58,000 in 1990.
Changes were apparent in leadership and in the
appearance of the area. In 1990, Cornelius
Boganey became the first African American city
manager of Port Arthur, the same year Mary Ellen
Summerlin was selected the city’s first woman
mayor. Raymond Johnson, another African
American, became president of the Port of Port
Arthur. On the other hand, workers imploded the
Goodhue Hotel, dark for twenty years, and
constructed new federal and state prisons in the
central portion of Jefferson County near Nederland
and Port Neches, providing needed employment
40 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL