Rod Bernard (August 12, 1940 – July 12, 2020) was an American singer who helped to pioneer the musical genre known as "swamp pop", which combined New Orleans-style rhythm and blues, country and western, and Cajun and black Creole music. He is remembered as one of the foremost musicians of this south Louisiana-east Texas idiom, along with such notables as Bobby Charles, Johnnie Allan, Tommy McLain, and Warren Storm. Bernard was born in Opelousas, Louisiana. His parents were French-speaking Cajuns from working-class backgrounds, and as a child he imbibed the traditional Caju…
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