Jay’s Lounge & Cockpit — A Juke Joint Legend

Cankton, Louisiana

Outside Lafayette, Louisiana, and tucked on the outskirts of the tiny town of Cankton, Jay’s Lounge & Cockpit wasn’t your typical dance hall… it was a gritty & unforgettable slice of Louisiana culture where live music, dance and rooster fighting collided into a brilliant mess of zydeco, down home cooking and chicken wire.

“What’s the strangest place you’ve worked?” asked David Letterman to Kim Wilson & Jimmie Vaughan of The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Wilson instantly knew the answer — but hesitated for a second, “well, a real weird place was a place called Jay’s Lounge and Cockpit in Cankton Louisiana… they’d have rooster fights in the back while we were playing, and at the end the night they’d eat the loser.”

Vaughan was quick to chime in, “It was a lot of fun thought!

But Kim’s muted final three words about Jay’s painted the most vivid picture: “…it was one of those chicken wire places.”

You only need to look to the Courir de Mardi Gras to know Cajuns know how to party the most in a state with a reputation for partying harder than anyone. So it should be no surprise that the low-ceiling ramshackle fire hazard off Interstate 10 that was Jay’s had a fiercely-defended reputation for partying the hardest.

It had a rusty, hand painted sign on the front of a primitive building made from ancient, greyed wood and twisted supports, threatening for decades to sink back into the mud — but miraculously holding through hell, high water and honky tonk alike. The rooster fighting happened in the back, in a primitive, bleacher-lined barn. They said the dance hall — that’s what they sometimes called it — came later.

Blues master Lightnin’ Hopkins often haunted Jay’s, as did a slew of Texan and Louisianan musicians on their way to the top. Stevie Ray Vaughan adored Jay’s, one of the places that supported & encouraged his early development, and he can be seen proudly sporting a Jay’s tee in various photos. Jay’s was like a second home to Zydeco accordion trailblazer Clifton Chenier, who routinely rocked & swayed the crowd into a nirvanna.

The dusty dance floor would often find lovers, friends, and men holding chickens dancing to the sweet sounds of Texarkana blues, country, zydeco & rock n roll while the savory smell of homemade rooster gumbo filled the air.
Jay’s even made the February, 1978 issue of Hustler Magazine, which called it “the last true American honky-tonk.”

In true Louisiana fashion, it’s not well-known exactly when Jay’s emerged from the swamp. Locals said it had been there “decades”… and it’s not common knowledge when Jay’s closed up in the 1980s. But it did, leaving only the best hazy memories of patron’s lives.

People still routinely call us to pick up a Jay’s t-shirt & share their unbelievable (but no doubt true) stories of the wild nights at Jay’s.

Eventually they paved over Jay’s Lounge and put up a Dollar General — which later suffered a fire, no doubt sparked by the ghosts of restless Acadians (or roosters).

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