Clifton Chenier (1925–1987) grew up listening to his dad play a percussive and syncopated style of music known as La La at house dances held in South Louisiana’s Black French Creole communities. He learned to play the accordion as a teenager and added his own twist to the style with elements of popular styles like R&B and blues. This new recipe of musical ingredients created what would soon be known as zydeco, and Chenier would spend his life performing it to fans across the world.

In 1964, Chenier met Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, one of the preeminent labels releasing traditional music at that time. Strachwitz recorded Chenier throughout the 1960s and led the musician to wider recognition and larger audiences at festivals across the United States and Europe. In 2016, Arhoolie was acquired by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, ensuring that Chenier’s vast catalog would be preserved and made available to the public in perpetuity.

This November, Folkways will release King of Louisiana Blues & Zydeco, a four-CD/six-LP box set in celebration of Chenier’s centennial birthday. The set features the zydeco legend’s iconic work with Arhoolie and other labels, including songs from Bogalusa Boogie, the only zydeco album to earn a five-star rating from Rolling Stone. Photos, posters, and other graphic artifacts from Arhoolie Foundation’s collection will accompany the set, alongside essays from award-winning writers and a personal remembrance by Chenier’s son, zydeco musician C.J. Chenier.

The birthday celebration does not end with the box set: Folkways will also release a limited-edition seven-inch single featuring the Rolling Stones’ cover of Chenier’s “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés” on June 27. On the edition’s flip side is a version of the song from Chenier’s 1965 sessions with Strachwitz, offering a more comprehensive appreciation of the classic’s global impact.

After an interview with Chenier,  author and musician Ann Savoy said he was “so charming and friendly, kind of shy...” Charming and friendly he may have been, but Clifton’s presence at the 1974 Festival of American Folklife (now the Smithsonian Folklife Festival) looked anything but “shy.”

That summer, the Festival’s “Evolution of American Folk Music” concert series presented modern music as a product of multigenerational roots and intergenerational relationships. Chenier performed alongside other Cajun musicians, like the Balfa Brothers and the family of zydeco musician Amédé Ardoin, representing the many stylistic strains that had evolved from traditional French songs.

Chenier did not want to play rock music like anyone else, and he did not want to play Cajun music like anyone else. As Savoy noted, it would take a larger group of instruments aside from the accordion for Chenier to holistically tell his story . He wanted to carry the legacy of other musicians who had been playing zydeco before him and bring a new sound to the musical style, which his audiences received well. Ardoin was the first to record zydeco music in 1929, but Chenier saw his own contributions as revolutionary in distinguishing the musical style from others.

“I want to let them know an accordion can do anything,” Chenier said in a 1978 interview with Strachwitz. “I’m going to prove to them that you don’t have to play just polka. You can play anything you want to play if you know how to play it.”

Cassie Roshu is a media intern at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and an incoming senior at Syracuse University majoring in photojournalism and international relations.