Soon after, he put a band together, including his wife, Shelly on rubboard.

When Carrier was 6 years old, he began to accompany his father to these events, and would play along with him on the frottoir, or "rubboard".

Clifton's brother Cleveland Chenier famously played this newly designed rubboard using bottle openers.

The zydeco rubboard, designed specifically for the genre solely as a percussion instrument, is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

In those years he sat in with numerous swamp music and blues groups that came through the club and acquired his first rubboard or percussion board.

Conversely, the frottoir (zydeco rubboard) dispenses with the frame and consists simply of the metal ribbing hung around the neck.

Along with the accordion, the second main instrument in a zydeco group is a corrugated metal washboard, called a Zydeco Rubboard or frottoir.

And the band included Troy Davidson on rubboard (metal washboard) rather than Cleveland Chenier, Clifton's older brother.

In addition to the accordion, zydeco's central instrument, he has two guitarists, a bass player, drummer, saxophonist, trumpeters and the requisite rubboard, a washboard vest.

Donna the Buffalo is a genial jam band with a Cajun streak from Tara Nevins's button accordion and rubboard.

Mr. Rubin's backup band, the Zydeco Twisters, currently consists of two guitars, electric bass, saxophone, rubboard and drums.

But all zydeco bands build on a rhythmic foundation of accordion and the rubboard, a metal washboard percussion instrument worn across the chest like a bulletproof vest.

It didn't matter; the cross-rhythms of rubboard and drums raised a ruckus behind the bouncy accordion tunes and the cheerful cackle of Mr. Chavis's voice.

As the son of zydeco legend John Delafose, Geno started playing the rubboard in his father's band, The Eunice Playboys, when he was seven years old.

At the age of eight, he joined his father's band, the Eunice Playboys as a rubboard player and continued to play with the band until his father's death in 1994.

Mr. Springsteen rasped as the band played "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)," with a zydeco rubboard ratcheting away.

Many aficionados say that Mr. Carrier is one of the few remaining zydeco purists, eschewing amplified instruments and hewing to the original guitars, drums, accordion and rubboard.

The band of four women and five men easily handled everything from delicate ballads to Cajun-tinged folk-rock (with Ms. Lauper scraping a rubboard, a washboard vest) to pushy funk.

The drummer, Steve (Skeeta) Charlot, attached funk, disco and reggae rhythms to the shuffling beat of Wilfred (Caveman) Pierre's rubboard, or metal washboard.

The music rides on the wheeze of an accordion, the clatter of a frottoir or rubboard (a corrugated metal vest, played with a pair of spoons), and bluesy, resilient singing.

Carrier formed his first band in 1961, at the age of 14, with himself on guitar, a brother on drums, his uncle on the rubboard, and a local accordion player named Chris Johnson.

The rubboard is played by his son David, the drums by his son Alton Jr., and thus a family tradition is maintained: Mr. Rubin's father was also a musician.

In Lawtell, the band was Zydeco Force, an odd combination of traditional and modern zydeco, using button accordion but no rubboard (metal washboard), and the crowd danced up a storm.

Ms. Mitchell, who sings and plays the rubboard with a whisk, remembers being one of the few blacks in the audience when Cajun or Zydeco bands would play in Hartford about six years ago.

The first zydeco rubboard made to Chenier's design was made at Chenier's request by their fellow Louisianan, Willie Landry, a master welder-fabricator, who was also working at the refinery.