POP MUSIC REVIEWS : DOPSIE ROCKS

Rockin’ Dopsie has a leg up on the other contenders striving to lay claim to the ailing Clifton Chenier’s vacant throne, judging by the veteran accordionist/vocalist’s two-hour set of state-of-the-art barroom dance music at the Music Machine Thursday.

Neither Dopsie’s accordion solos nor vocals delivered Chenier’s charismatic stamp, and Dopsie certainly was no visionary when it came to song selection. The bulk of the set consisted of bayou-ized treatments of “Flip, Flop and Fly,” “Keep-a-Knockin”’ and “Jambalaya.”

But that scarcely mattered when measured against the firepower of his sextet, featuring four Chenier veterans alongside Dopsie’s sons on drums and metal rub-board. The Zydeco Twisters’ power and finesse kept the crammed dance floor in non-stop motion.

The band’s stellar instrumentalist was saxophonist John Hart. The blind tenor player hardly moved as he unleashed a series of soulful solos marked by sudden octave jumps and a jazzy fluidity.

Hart and Dopsie’s lack of stage presence was more than compensated for by the hyperactive antics of Dopsie’s son David Rubin, who provided crowd-pleasing flash to complement the high-voltage dance music.