Meaux Sound Memories Records

- The “Crazy Cajun” Christmas 45 Nobody Can Find: Johnny & Edgar Winter’s Secret Gulf Coast Side

Huey P. Meaux (1929–2011) didn’t “work the Gulf Coast scene” so much as prowl it. The “Crazy Cajun” nickname fits, not because it’s cute, but because he moved like a man who could smell a hit in the air and wanted it bottled before it evaporated. Late ’50s onward, he’s there—pushing, hustling, recording, talking too loud, making things happen. Swamp pop, R&B, rock and roll, a little country grit on the cuffs—Texas and Louisiana stirred together until it sounded like the inside of a sweaty club and the parking lot outside it. Later he ends up owning Houston’s SugarHill Studios (he buys the old Gold Star place in 1971), and people still point at the Sir Douglas Quintet and Freddy Fender when they want neat examples. Neat isn’t really his thing.

The part that gets me, though, is how a tiny imprint like Meaux Sound Memories can feel bigger than it is—because one odd little 1966 holiday 7" (MSM 101) somehow exists at all. One side: Johnny and Edgar Winter taking Charles Brown’s “Please Come Home for Christmas” (first out in 1960) and dragging it into a colder, bluer place. Not festive. Not cute. More like a late-night phone call you shouldn’t make, but do anyway. Flip it and Jimmy Donley hits you with “Santa! Don’t Pass Me By,” a song that was already floating around earlier in the 1962–1963 window (including on Tear Drop) before it reappears here like it never left town. I picture Meaux loving that—recycling the good stuff, slapping a new coat on it, grinning while everyone else tries to keep their hands clean. And that’s the whole vibe: messy, human, and impossible to file neatly under “holiday music.”