Marie Herpin Adams; Vermilion Parish Bios, Louisiana 
Submitted by Kathy Tell 
Source: Louisiana Folklife Database; Western Acadiana Region 3, 
maintained by the Louisiana Regional Folklife Program, at Northwestern 
State University of Louisiana. These biographies offer information to 
the general public. 
Submitted: August 2004

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 Marie Herpin Adams
Cajun Ballads

Marie Herpin Adams was born on the countryside near Kaplan, Louisiana 
in 1922. She is the youngest of seven children. She grew up speaking 
Cajun French and learned English later when she began school.

Mrs. Adams, a fine singer of traditional French Louisiana ballads, 
comes from a long line of ballad singers. Her great-grandmother, Marie 
Demais Trahan, came to South Louisiana from Nova Scotia at the age of 
12 or 13. As a young girl, Marie Adams learned songs by listening to 
her one-hundred-four-year-old great-grandmother, grandparents, and 
parents. She says, that back then "people took such songs for granted 
and singing ballads was not seen as anything special, but was just part 
of everyday life." She recalls living in the country as a child, when 
almost every Saturday night there was a singing party at someone's 
house. Lanterns were hung in the trees and people sat on the porch 
eating and drinking homemade wine and beer and singing songs of love 
stories and telling humorous tales.

The song's beauty lies in its haunting melodies, in its story lines, 
and rich vocabularies. The home-based, unaccompanied musical tradition 
of balladry has almost disappeared as instrumental dance music has 
gained popularity. Some singers like Marie Adams keep the ballad 
tradition alive, singing the stories of love and life in French 
Louisiana that they learned by word of mouth. Mrs. Adams knows at least 
eight songs, which she calls by names like Wednesday Waltz and La Valse 
de la France. She sings one song that has been traced by folklorist 
Barry Ancelet to the year 1718, The Seven-Year Waltz. She calls one of 
her songs, the Sunday Morning Song, "my daddy's song" because it was 
one of the first song that she learned and it was her father's 
favorite. The song tells the story of a heartbroken young man whose 
beloved dies. When he asks his mother to take the lace off their 
clothes and replace it with black, she reminds him that there are 
plenty of women left. He replies, "I want only my beloved."

Mrs. Adams has performed many times at the Liberty Theater in Eunice 
and at the Louisiana Folklife Festival. One of her granddaughters, now 
12, is learning the songs from Mrs. Adams, ensuring that the tradition 
will live on in the next generation.