Michael Doucet

Michael Louis Doucet (born February 14, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter and musician best known as the founder of the Cajun band BeauSoleil.

Early life Doucet was born in Scott, Louisiana, to a Cajun family. Family parties in the 1950s always included "French music." Two of his paternal aunts sang ballads, and many family members played musical instruments. He learned banjo at age six, guitar at eight, and belonged to a Cajun rock band with his cousin, Zachary Richard, at twelve.

In 1975, he started the Cajun band Coteau, and two years later he started BeauSoleil with Kenneth Richard and Sterling Richard. BeauSoleil plays an eclectic combination of traditional Cajun music, blues, country, jazz, and zydeco. Doucet has been a member of a more traditional Cajun band, the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band with Ann Savoy and Marc Savoy, and Fiddlers 4 with Darol Anger, Rushad Eggleston, and Bruce Molsky. He began teaching in 1977 at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

Awards and honors

In 1975, Doucet received an NEA Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant to study Cajun fiddle styles from masters such as Varise Conner, Hector Duhon, Canray Fontenot, Lionel LeLeux, and Dennis McGee.