Iry LeJeune

Iry LeJeune came up when fiddle-led string bands, shaped by western swing, ruled Cajun dance halls. His uncle Angelas had recorded in New Orleans and knew the Black accordionist Amédé Ardoin, and the teenager spent long days playing along to Ardoin's records. On Saturdays he carried his accordion in a burlap sack to the road and hitchhiked toward an audience. Houston gave him his first records, and Eddie Shuler then founded Goldband to release the rest. A speeding car killed him on October 8, 1955, as he changed a tire on the way home from Eunice.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 12 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 14 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Vermilionville — 19 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 24 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.

More markers nearby

• Le Vieux Presbytère — steps away
• Acadia Baptist Academy — 6.4 mi
• Grand Coteau — 9.8 mi
• Academy of the Sacred Heart — 11 mi