Jo-El Sonnier (born Joel Sonnier; October 2, 1946 – January 13, 2024) was an American singer-songwriter and accordionist who performed country music and Cajun music. Originally signed to Mercury Nashville Records, Sonnier charted several minor singles on the Billboard country charts in the late 1970s. By the late 1980s, he had signed to RCA Records, breaking through with the Top Ten hits "No More One More Time" and a cover of Richard Thompson's "Tear-Stained Letter". Although his chart success waned at the beginning of the 1990s, he continued recording music, releasing more than thirty albums primarily on independent labels.
Born Joel Sonnier in Rayne, Louisiana, to French-speaking sharecropper parents on October 2nd, 1946, he started playing accordion when he was three, made his first radio appearance when he was six, and his first recording when he was eleven. He wrote the Cajun classic ‘Tes Yeaux Bleus’ when he was twelve, and he released various independent recordings as a teenager before landing a recording contract with Nashville-based Mercury Records in 1970, but without much success in the country music field but he gained critical recognition in the late ‘70s for the Cajun records he recorded for Rounder Records.
Sonnier temporarily abandoned
his pursuit of a country music career in favor of recording Cajun music on the
independent Rounder Records label. Although his independent album “Cajun Life”
did not produce much commercial success, it was nominated for a Grammy Award.
After being signed as Merle Haggard's opening act, Sonnier later decided to
return to country music and in 1987 he was signed to RCA Records. This time he
had quite a lot of commercial success with songs like ‘No More One More Time’
and a cover of Richard Thompson’s ‘Tear Stained Letter’.
Jo-El Sonnier returned to Rounder Records and Cajun music in the late ‘90s becoming a guiding light and frequent collaborator with other Cajun musicians like Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil. His 2013 album, ‘The Legacy’ was a traditional Cajun album recorded in Cajun French, and it won the Grammy for Best Regional Roots Music Album. Hurricane Laura destroyed Jo-El Sonnier’s Westlake, Louisiana, home in 2020, and this experience provided the inspiration for his ‘Survivants’ album recorded at Dockside Studios with the cream of cajun musicians and featuring songs written by Sonnier.
In the late 1990s, he returned to Rounder Records to record Cajun music once more, occasionally collaborating with Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil. Sonnier also saw his second Grammy nomination, for the 1997 album Cajun Pride; a third soon followed with 2001's Cajun Blood being nominated for Best Traditional Folk Album. He was inducted into the Museum of the Gulf Coast, Music Hall of Fame in 2002.
His contribution to Cajun music was recognised when he was inducted into the Cajun French Music Association Hall of Fame in 2008 and The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2009. He played every part of the United States and visited thirty-two countries ensuring his Cajun legacy was brought to the world. The Festivals Acadiens et Creoles website quotes Jo-El Sonnier as saying “I perform every show as if it was my last, and it doesn’t matter to me if there are only 25 people or 25,000 people in the audience, I still perform the same way”, which is a fitting epitaph an icon of Cajun and Louisiana music.
Sonnier made a brief cameo appearance as a member of a dance band in the third episode of the first season of the HBO crime series True Detective, which is set in southern Louisiana. On February 8, 2015, Sonnier won a Grammy Award for Best Regional Roots Music Album. In 2017, Sonnier self-published a book titled The Little Boy Under the Wagon, in which he revealed that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.
Sonnier died of a heart
attack on January 13, 2024, just after a performance at Llano Country Opry in
Llano, Texas, where he had played for over an hour and received a standing
ovation. His performance ended with his signature "Tear-Stained
Letter" and an encore of "Jambalaya". He was 77.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Americana UK)