Here’s a great tune from the repertory of Les Montagnards Laurentiens, a hugely popular and successful radio musical ensemble from the Québec City region who performed live every Saturday evening on the airwaves of CHRC from 1931 1962. The show, which ran either a half-hour or an hour, featured traditional dance music with the occasional song, joke, and comic sketch, with an in-house radio host. The original Montagnards were a quartet (three fiddles and guitar), but the band personnel was fairly fluid, becoming much larger in the 1940s and eventually including accordion, piano, bass, and saxophone, and clarinet. The Montagnards Laurentiens show occasionally broadcast live from local theaters or Quebec City’s provincial fairgrounds, playing to packed, enthusiastic crowds. When CHRC went from a 100-watt to a 1000-watt station in the 1940s, the listening audience for the Montagnards’s weekly show expanded significantly to many parts of central and eastern Quebec.
I learned this tune from Marcel Messervier, a stellar accordion builder, player, and composer, who listened to the Montagnards every Saturday night during his childhood.
Quadrille des Montagnards (dance speed, mp3)
