John L. Boudreaux

John Landry “Buddy” Boudreaux (December 27, 1917 – June 13, 2015) was an American big band and jazz musician. He played saxophone and clarinet. Starting in 1934, he directed and played in a number of bands that toured the southern United States and drew nationally known performers to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The State-Times newspaper called him "the city’s sound of big band". His bands backed such artists as Andy Williams, Bernadette Peters, Doc Severinsen, Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Burt Bacharach, Johnny Mathis, The Four Tops, Bob Hope, George Burns and Joan Rivers. He opened shows for Tony Bennett, Tony Orlando, Louise Mandrell, The Beach Boys and Bill Cosby. His father, Edward Lawrence Boudreaux (1893-1970), was a machinist supervisor at the Standard Oil refinery in Baton Rouge.

A music teacher heard Boudreaux blowing a cousin's saxophone and talked him into lessons. With money earned caddying for a neighbor who was the golf professional at a Baton Rouge country club, Boudreaux, at age 12, bought a saxophone and, for $10, a dozen music lessons, the only formal training he ever had. To please his father, he enrolled as a chemical engineering major at Louisiana State University, but music remained his first interest. He played in the LSU Tiger Marching Band. He began his career as a band leader in 1939 by visiting Baton Rouge clubs and claiming to have a band that was booked solid out of town for two months. Impressed, “the club owners hired him,” the State-Times newspaper wrote later. “Then he went out and formed a band.”

The 16-piece Buddy Lee Orchestra was co-founded in 1973 by Boudreaux and Lee Fortier, a trumpet-playing friend from their days in the youth orchestra. playing for Mardi Gras balls, dances, wedding receptions, riverboat parties, restaurant brunch crowds, and debutante balls. During his sons’ growing years, he served as a leader of their Cub Scout and Boy Scout packs.

Personal life and death

Boudreaux married Ruth Bowman Suthon (1925-2019), an LSU graduate and Standard Oil co-worker, in 1947. They had four sons—Richard L. Boudreaux (1948) a journalist; John L. Boudreaux Jr. (1950-2018), a retired FedEx pilot; Ronald C. Boudreaux (1956-2019), a professional drummer; and Jeffrey L. Boudreaux (1959), a professional drummer—three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Broadcasts and films Boudreaux performed on the Derby Show, a daily broadcast on the Baton Rouge radio station WJBO to promote a three-month-long dance marathon in 1940. Boudreaux's music appeared in the movies The Toy (1982), Blaze (1989), and the French film Louisiana (1984).

Discography The Buddy Boudreaux Quartet (1983) The Buddy Boudreaux Jazz Ensemble (1984) My Baton Rouge (1985) Buddy Lee Orchestra (1985) XL-Acoustic Jazz Combo (1985) The Buddy Boudreaux Dance Band (1985)