Simply put: the real thing. These 26 tracks (remastered from nostalgically scratchy 78s) document Cajun music's greatest fiddler performing duets on the so-called devil's instrument with either Ernest Fruge or Sady Courville during the era just prior to when guitar and accordion became intrinsic parts of the Cajun sound. Dennis McGee (1893-1989) played strong and forcefully, with a style uninfluenced by other sources. "I play French!" he once told Will Spires, who, along with Cajun musicologist Ann Savoy, supplies elaborate liner notes here. "I play my tunes plain. I don't mix them up with nothing." With his own fiddle, a droning accompanist, and his high, no-nonsense voice the only instrumentation for dances, McGee conveys hardscrabble rhythmic insistence in French-language standards concerning love and its loss, one- and two-steps, waltzes, reels, and the occasional square dance. --Richard Gehr