"Hello Baby!"

Before the hits, J. P. Richardson was a radio man chasing a record. In May 1957 he broadcast for five days, two hours and eight minutes from the lobby of the Jefferson Theatre in Beaumont, Texas, playing 1,821 records and beating the old mark by eight minutes. "Chantilly Lace," released in late June 1958, reached No. 6, spent 22 weeks in the national Top 40 and sold over a million copies, a comic phone flirtation. He is also credited with making the first music video, in 1958. He died in Iowa at 28.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Southdown Plantation and Terrebonne Museum — 13 mi
  A Greek Revival sugar plantation house in Houma, worked by 233 enslaved people by 1852, with the last Terrebonne mill's story and a worker's cabin of about 1885.
• Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  A 4,212-acre refuge of freshwater marsh and cypress-tupelo swamp southwest of Houma, with a nature trail to a boardwalk and observation deck and mostly boat-only access.
• LUMCON DeFelice Marine Center — 17 mi
  The Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium's laboratory at the end of Highway 56, open for self-guided tours of aquaria and exhibits, an observation tower and a pond boardwalk.
• Laurel Valley Village — 25 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.

More markers nearby

• Sacred Heart Church — steps away
• Montegut School — 0.4 mi
• Saint Joseph Church — 2.5 mi
• NAS Houma (LTA) — 9.8 mi