I'm sure that Joel Sonnier is just one of several Zydeco and/or Cajun artists who sing French translations of "Jambalaya." Clifton Chenier, for one, used to do many classic R&B and country numbers translated from English to (idiomatic Louisiana) French, including about half of the Fats Domino songbook.

Anyone looking for French lyrics to any number of originally-English American songs will find plenty of alternatives by researching the recordings of Zydeco singers. These guys would undoubtedly provide good translations, free of clumsy transliterations, because they're bilingual and have intimate knowledge of the idiomatic local use of both English and French.

Thibodaux and Fontenot are among the most common Cajun surnames; they're also, coincidentally, place names (of a major city and a tiny hamlet respectively), but I'm sure that Hank was singing about large clans of people attending the party.

"My cheramie-oh" is nothing more than "my dear" plus an extra nonsense syllable.

Gumbo is a thick soup that often contains one meat and one seafood ingredient (e.g., turkey and oyster gumbo); Creole gumbo usually means all seafood (oysters and shrimp and a few small hardshell crabs ~ "gumbo crabs"). All-vegetable ("green") gumbo is different, a thinnner soup that appears on menus as "Gumbo Z'herbes"; I have no idea where that "z" comes from ~ it's not standard Parisian French, that's for sure. All gumbos are normally served over white rice, which soaks up much of the liquid and makes the dish less soup-like and more "solid," perhaps seeming more like stew than soup.

The all-important thickening agent in gumbo is EITHER file powder or okra. It must be noted, however, that the word "gumbo" is the West African word for okra ~ meaning that the dish "gumbo" was originally made using okra, and that file was a later subsitution.

Never heard of file powder being carcinogenic. It is consumed only in small quantities (e.g., no more than a tablespoon per big potful, if I'm not mistaken).

Crawfish pie is NOT, as far as I know, a traditional Louisiana dish, and Hank may have made it up to fit his rhyme/rhythm scheme. People today sometimes make all different kinds of pies containing crawfish, but there does not seem to be an agreed-upon "classic" or "prototype" crawfish pie recipe. In my opinion, this phenomenon has to be a response to the song (i.e., the song came first, only then the actual pies).

Have you heard the one about the Cajun zoo?

How do you know you're at a Cajun zoo?

At a regular zoo, each exhibit has a sign giving the name of the animal, plus the Latin scientific name of its genus and species. At a Cajun zoo, the sign gives the name of the animal and the recipe.