Harry "Big Daddy" Hypolite born 19 April 1937

Harry “Big Daddy” Hypolite (19April 1937 - 22 June 2005) was an American blues guitarist and singer. 

Hypolite had said in interviews and song that his blues inspiration came starting at about age 12 when he cut sugar cane for $1 a ton around his native St. Martinville, Louisiana. He dropped out of school to work after the fourth grade and didn't learn English until about age 14, speaking until then Creole French. Music became an outlet for him, and he began buying records by artists like BB King, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. He learnt to play guitarby listening to 45-rpm records. 

Still in his teens, Hypolite one night climbed atop stacked wooden soda crates and peered through a window of the Dew Drop Inn, a poular juke joint in St. Martinville to see Guitar Slim onstage. "He'd been drinking some liquor, and he got drunk and couldn’t pick his guitar," Hypolite said in a 2000 interview. "Didn’t nobody know who I was, and I snuck around to the side. I went into the dressing room, and I saw that guitar and I played it. Didn’t nobody know I knew how to play guitar.” 

Hypolite recalled how taken he was by the colorful suits that he used to see Guitar Slim wear. When his time came, Hypolite always dressed sharp onstage, usually in bright and bold colors. He relished the part of showman and used it to great effect.  Hypolite worked part-time as a musician until the early 1980s when Clifton Chenier hired him fulltime for his Red Hot Louisiana Band. Hypolite played all over the world behind the most famous Zydeco artist there's ever been until Chenier's death in 1987. Son C.J. Chenier then took the band's reins, and Hypolite stayed on with the unit until 1999, when he left to join his nephew Nathan Williams of Nathan & the Zydeco Cha-Chas. 

            Here’s “Hog For You Baby” from LP Louisiana Country Boy

                                     

Though Hypolite's vocals were featured on several recordings with the Red Hot Louisiana Band, his lone recording as a leader was a long-out-of-print single for the La Louisianne label. That is, until 2001 when Hypolite released his first -- and only solo CD, "Louisiana Country Boy," recorded on APO Records of Salinas, Kansas. Hypolite wrote six of the twelve songs here, with four of the others being covers of his mentor (boss, friend, and bandleader), Zydeco king, Clifton Chenier. "This is like a dream to me," Hypolite said around the time his star was rising. "It really is." The record was nominated for a Handy Award in the category of "Best New Artist Debut" and propelled Hypolite to international acclaim. 

And as the album's title track reveals, Hypolite has bottled pure emotion by writing and singing autobiographical songs that reach all the way back to his childhood. He's been waiting for this moment for so long, played it over in his head so many times, that almost every song on this recording was done in one take, with no lyric sheets. On "Colinda," "You Used to Call Me" and "Hog for You Baby," Hypolite honors his heritage by warmly phrasing in Creole French. Three of the songs ' "For Better or Worse," "Big Bad Girl" and "Louisiana Country Boy" ' Harry improvised on the spot. 

He performed at some of the most respected blues venues, including the Monterey Bay Blues Festival, Lucerne Blues Festival and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Hypolite gained a reputation as a showstopper, using his huge smile and raw, autobiographical blues (some sung in Creole French) to regularly win fans and repeat bookings.In recent years, Hypolite had been a staple on the Acadiana club scene and played regularly in venues such as 307 Downtown, Artmosphere and Clementine's in New Iberia. 

Harry Hypolite, the natural-born entertainer who in the last several years had finally tasted life as an in-demand bandleader, died June 22, 2005, the result of a car crash near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was 68. 

(Edited from Acoustic Sounds News, Sound Stage Network & The Independent)