The band played five gigs in four days, including an eight-hour, Saturday engagement that started at 9 a.m. The song made Mardi Gras weekend 2005 hectic for the Fontenot and Friends. The Billboard story has made the rounds online and is posted on the Yahoo! music site of Australia and New Zealand. In February, Billboard magazine had a “Donkey” feature in which Eunice record store owner Todd Ortego said the song was his bestseller throughout the 2004 holiday season and continues to sell. Some pop and country stations in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and Alexandria, which usually treat Cajun and zydeco songs like flu viruses, began spinning the song during their afternoon drives. Since last fall, “Ride the Donkey” has been a top request on Louisiana Music station KBON (101.1FM) in Eunice. Now, that’s what people know it as-The Donkey Song.”īased on Nolan Cormier’s freewheeling Cajun hit of 1971, “Hee Haw Breakdown,” “Ride the Donkey” is a humorous ditty featuring guitarist Karl Deshotels teasing fiddler Mark Young about a cute donkey he bought at a cattle auction.ĭouble entendre arises in the chorus when a persistent lady at the auction begs to “ride that donkey.” The suggestive lyrics are reminiscent of Rockin’ Sidney’s million seller, “My Toot Toot.” He said first of all, the CD is going to be called Ride The Donkey. “We put it on there and brought it to Floyd Soileau at Swallow Records and he said we needed to make a few changes. “As an afterthought, we put the song on the CD because every place we play, the fans would request it. “We were originally going to call the CD A Taste Of Louisiana, since we have a little swamp pop, a little Cajun and a little zydeco on it,” said Fontenot. Ironically, the band’s rosy donkey song almost didn’t get on the CD. The title song has become a radio and record store favorite and captured international attention. In classic literature, a lovesick Romeo once told his beloved Juliet “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But would that rose smell as sweet if it was a donkey?ĭon Fontenot, leader of the Cajun band Les Amis de la Louisiane (Friends of Louisiana) answers with an emphatic “yes.” Everything’s coming up donkeys for Fontenot and Friends on their hit CD, Ride The Donkey, released on Swallow Records of Ville Platte.
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