Cajun music haven

By: RAYMOND PARTSCH III
Managing Editor

It is a shade after 10 o’clock on a sweltering Saturday morning and a crowd of around 40 people have already gathered inside the small red-brick bar located on 6th Street in this Louisiana prairie town of roughly 3,500 residents. The patrons are already having one heck of a good time as they are downing cold can of Schlitz beer and Crown and Coke, all the while listening and dancing to the distinctive toe-tapping sounds of the accordion, fiddle, drums and steel guitar reverberate behind a small-roped off area.
An elderly slim woman, with a smile that lights up the darkened room in an instant, has just given a few patrons shots of her beloved Hot Damn. One of those women turns and blurts out “Tante Sue de Mamou, will you sing for us?”
The 84-year-old woman proceeds to join the band and belts out a traditional Cajun song, as the crowd erupts in joy with couples dragging their partners for some two-stepping’ on the small dance floor.
These people have  come from all over to experience laissez les bons temps rouler, and there may not be a better place in the world for that one-of-kind experience than Fred’s Lounge in downtown Mamou.
“It is just a Godsend,” said Tante Sue Vasseur, widow of original owner Fred Tate. “It is a beautiful thing. You just wonder how and why.”
The building that has become known worldwide as  the “Cajun Music Capital of the World” began seven decades  ago. Alfred “Fred” Tate purchased the bar on his 29th birthday on November 26, 1946 and renamed it Fred’s Lounge.  The building originally had a partition with Fred’s on the south side, and a tiny diner on the north side occupied and owned by Tante Sue’s mother. Tante would leave school on her lunch hour to help her mother serve lunches to the area’s workers. This is when she fell in love with the man who would become her future husband and father to her two children.
“I refused to marry him when I was 16,” laughed Sue. “I turned 17 on June 3rd and I got married on June 9th to Fred.”
Tante Sue would join her husband in the bar and helped him establish the place as a venue for live Cajun music. In the early years, radio station KEUN out of Eunice would broadcast live on Saturdays from Fred’s Lounge, before KVPI (1050 AM) in Ville Platte took over broadcasting live music for the next 50-plus years as such legendary acts as the Mamou Cajun Band with Sady Courville and Don Thibodeaux and Cajun Fever took the stage on Saturdays.
Fred’s Lounge became a haven for those who loved Cajun music, as well as being credited as the place where Fred Tate, Paul Tate and the author Revon Reed helped rejuvenate Courir de Mardi Gras in 1950’s.
Fred’s Lounge started to gain worldwide fame in the early 1980’s when the lounge was featured on television, stateside and in the United Kingdom.
“That opened the flood gates for us all over the world,” Tante Sue said. “I really believe that in my heart that being put on national TV began our worldwide success.”
Fred’s popularity is so widespread that folks at the United State Post Office help fill in the bar’s address on letters.
“We helped a woman from Australia with her credit card,” current owner 58-year-old Steve Guillory said. “So she wanted to thank us so she sent us a letter and wrote on the envelope Fred’s Lounge, USA. Five days later it was on the front door. Somebody had written on there Mamou and Louisiana and somebody else put the zip code.”
Fred’s Lounge may be known worldwide for its toe-tapping fun but there are rules that all visitors must abide to, a set of that Tante Sue serves as the enforcer of.
“No lip kissing, cheek is okay but lip kissing brings something else out of people,” said Sue, who proudly refers to herself as the lounge’s bouncer. “I had one lady tell me ‘but we’re married.’ I told her if you want lip kissing or want something else then go home or go get yourself a hotel room.”
No tongue kissing isn’t the only rule that patrons need to follow.
“No vulgarness,” Sue said. “The only four letter words I allow here are love, beer, cold or cash. I also don’t allow you to bring in your own drinks. I am not here for my looks… believe me. You got to get that stuff from behind the bar to get going here. Also if you are dancing with your drink or cigarette be cautious of your neighbors. This is the type of place where you can leave a $100 bill of change on the bar and it will stay there.”
If patrons do get out of hand there is always Fred’s Equalizer that rests behind the bar, which is an old pool stick with a rusted bolt in the bottom of it.
The Equalizer is rarely ever used as the number of skirmishes that have occurred over the years at Fred’s is few and far between.
“I broke up more fights in one night as a deputy than I have in 15 years over here,” Steve said.
Tante Sue’s husband Fred passed away in 1992 and the future of the legendary watering hole was uncertain. Her daughter wanted her to sell the place but Tante Sue came up with another idea. Instead of being open six days a week Fred’s Lounge would only be open on Saturdays. The strategy worked great as being open for roughly six hours one day per week has become a distinctive trait of Fred’s Lounge.
“Time of the day is different from anywhere else and that makes us unique,” Tante Sue said.
In January of 1997, Tante Sue and her daughters sold the bar to David Guillory but Tante Sue stayed on as the bar’s general manager, a role she still holds to this day. Tante Sue had only committed to stay on as manager for five years. Nearly two decades later she is still there, even thought she retired from the behind the bar in 2011.
“My children say ‘Mama it is time for you to quit,” Tante Sue said. “My heart is here. I enjoy the people, enjoy visiting. I play, I stock, I buy, I pay all the bills, taxes for the CPA. I still enjoy doing it.”
Steve Guillory unexpectedly became owner a few years ago. The former
Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Department deputy would help out his brother David  by working as the door man and cleaning up afterwards on Saturdays and during Mardi Gras, when the bar is open for the Monday and Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday.
Then one day in 2007 his brother just got up and sold him the famed watering hole.
“My brother bought this to retire from the oil field eventually,”  Steve said. “After a while of working in the oil field and trying to operate this place on Saturdays got the best of him. He stopped at my house one day and he said “Hey I just sold Fred’s. I said ‘what?’ He said get in with  me and we will go pass the papers. I just sold it to you.”
Besides keeping Tante Sue, Steve has kept it a family affair behind the bar as his nephew Jeremy Fontenot and niece Jamie Fontenot both work as bartenders.
The brother and sister have been surprised by just how famous the little bar truly is. Movie stars like Dennis Quaid, numerous musicians, soap opera actors and sports figures and even TV personalities like Judge Judy have stopped by. According to Jamie, Judy is a fan of Miller Lite.
“It’s cool to work here,” said Jamie who has tended bar for eight years at Fred’s. “People come here because they are happy and want to have a good time. People come here and leave here happy. It is a fun job.”
“I’ve met people from all around the world since working here,” Jeremy said. “I told someone once that I was a big fan of UFC champion Georges St-Pierre. About a year later that same guy brought him into the bar. It is crazy.”
In addition to the occasional celebrity sighting, the bar patrons consist of folks from all walks of life. There are farm hands, oil field workers, and bikers mingling with French tourists, college students and wealthy khaki-wearing out-of-towners.
Fred’s Lounge is simply a must-see venue for any fan of Cajun music.
Tommy Upchurch of Victoria, Texas heard about the place while visiting his daughter in Baton Rouge. So the 52-year-old and his wife and his daughter made the trip up to experience Fred’s and are planning to return in September.
“It is great to see people out having a great time,” Upchurch said. “You feel young being here. People are feeling young. She (Tante Sue) makes you feel young.”
The band, which plays from around 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) plays its final song of the afternoon and patrons pay their bills and slowly begin to disperse outside of the building. There are no frowns or angry looks from the diverse group of patrons. Instead there are nothing but smiles, even after Steve starts going through his not-so subtle routine of clearing out the famed place.
“The band stops around 1:30 and I let them trickle out on their own,” Steve said. “I start picking up the trash and emptying the garbage cans. I don’t throw them out or nothing but when I get tired after a little while with them still being here and I will turn the air conditioners off. They tend to leave pretty quickly after that. But they will be here next weekend.”

Louisiane de prés  or 'Louisiana up close' is a semi-annual feature series from The Ville Platte Gazette which showcases affordable attractions and establishments that are authentic to the storied landscape of Louisiana. This Sunday: Fred's Lounge in Mamou. Next Sunday: Michel Prudhomme Home in Opelousas.