Clifton Chenier Opened Antone’s First Chapter

Antone’s began with zydeco. During the Austin club’s opening weekend in 1975, Clifton Chenier and His Red Hot Louisiana Band played its original home on Sixth Street. Clifford Antone had turned a former furniture store into a place where the musicians he admired could play.

The address matters. This was the first Antone’s, decades before the club’s current Fifth Street room. The opening belongs to the institution’s history, rather than to the building visitors enter today.

Chenier’s booking gave that history a starting point: Louisiana music at the opening of an Austin blues club. The venue’s own timeline places the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Triple Threat in the early years that followed.

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Sources: antonesnightclub.com.