Bob Hamm

Bob's words came alive through other people's voices. He wrote the material — the comedy, the toasts, the lyrics — and handed it off to performers who brought it to audiences across South Louisiana and beyond. But some of his words took on lives of their own, pressed not onto vinyl but onto wood, ceramic, and kitchen walls across Acadiana.

"What Is a Cajun?"

"What Is a Cajun?" plaque

Bob wrote "What Is a Cajun?" in 1972. It was never published in a book or pressed onto a record. It didn't need to be. The poem spread the old-fashioned way — photocopied, clipped from the newspaper, hand-typed, and passed around until nobody remembered where it came from.

Then the decoupage artists found it. Across Acadiana, crafters pressed the poem onto cypress plaques, ceramic tiles, and lacquered boards. They sold them at craft fairs, gift shops, and flea markets. At one point, Bob estimated over 100,000 framed prints were circulating — most sold at seventy-five cents apiece, and none of them with a royalty check attached.

Plaques like the one above hung in kitchens, dens, and camp houses all over South Louisiana. If you grew up in Acadiana in the 1970s or 1980s, you almost certainly saw one. They were as common as cast iron skillets and as permanent as the humidity.

Cajun Nursery Rhymes

Cajun Nursery Rhymes

Bob took the nursery rhymes every child knows and rewrote them through the lens of Cajun life. Cajun Nursery Rhymes turned Mother Goose into something that sounded like it came off a front porch in Breaux Bridge. A second volume followed.

Bud Fletcher Goes to Washington

Front cover Back cover & credits Vinyl label Billboard review, Dec. 1963

Theme Song

Read the full transcript →

Bob wrote the script for a comedy album about a Cajun everyman named Cyprienne Robespierre — his full name was Hewitt Berwyn Fletcher, but everyone called him "Bud" — who takes a trip to Washington, D.C. The album sent Bud stumbling through the Kennedy White House, Cold War politics, and federal bureaucracy, all filtered through the common sense of rural South Louisiana.

This was the fourth Bud Fletcher record on La Louisianne Records, the Lafayette label owned by Carol Rachou at 2823 Johnston Street. Bob is credited on the sleeve as the writer of "Cyprienne Robespierre Goes to Washington" and the lyrics to the album's theme song. Ron Gomez — broadcaster, MC, and vice president of a local broadcasting company — voiced several characters, including President Kennedy and Mr. "Coldwaters." Ben Gabus sang the theme. Rick Bernard played guitar.

The Bud Fletcher records were a phenomenon in South Louisiana. Locally financed, pressed in small runs, and sold through radio stations, dance halls, and word of mouth. Regional comedy like this was enormously popular before television flattened local humor into national sameness. These were front-porch political satire records, delivered in a Louisiana cadence thick enough to butter biscuits.

Then, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.

The album earned a three-star review in Billboard on December 21, 1963 — a month after the assassination — so the industry still saw potential. But the market for Kennedy humor was shrinking fast. A small-press Cajun comedy record didn't have the marketing muscle to push through a cultural shift like that. There was no re-press, no national promotion, no second chance. The window closed.

Small-run regional comedy records were rarely preserved to begin with. People reused the sleeves, taped over them, or left them in attics until the humidity finished them off. With the Kennedy material making the album harder to sell, surviving copies became genuinely rare — the kind of record that collectors and cultural historians get excited about when one surfaces, because so few did.

What you're hearing below was digitized from one of those surviving copies.

A Cajun Toast

"A Cajun Welcome" plaque 45 RPM sleeve Shelley & Jay Side A label Side B label

Bob co-wrote "A Cajun Toast" with Shelley Ford and Jay Chevalier, and wrote the liner notes on the sleeve — signed from Lafayette, Louisiana. The songwriting credit on the Creole Gold label reads Hamm–Ford–Chevalier.

The liner notes, in Bob's words, describe the Cajun as "traditionally depicted as he is on Saturday night. It is then that he gives vent to the boisterous good spirits that have bubbled in his heart all week. It is a night of song and dance, when fiddles shriek, accordions wail and les bon temps rouler!"

The 45 was recorded in Nashville at Music City Studio with a serious lineup of session musicians — Rufus Thibodeaux on Cajun violin, Phil Baugh on lead guitar, strings arranged by Kris Wilkinson. It was a Nashville production with Cajun soul.

There's a love story pressed into this record, too. Shelley Ford and Jay Chevalier fell in love while working on "A Cajun Toast" together. They finished the song in time for their wedding rehearsal supper.

The toast itself outlasted the vinyl it was pressed on. For over fifty years, Bob's words have been raised at weddings, festivals, retirement dinners, and family reunions across Acadiana. Most of the people reciting it have no idea who wrote it. They just know it's what you say when you raise a glass in Cajun country.

Have More?

The Hamm family is collecting and preserving Bob's media — albums, recordings, broadcasts, anything that captured his work. If you have a copy of a Bud Fletcher record, a tape of a radio spot Bob wrote, photographs from a recording session, or anything else from his career, we want to hear from you.

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