JEFFERY BROUSSARD & The Creole Cowboys
Lawtell, Louisiana
Zydeco
The roots of the Creole Cowboys' music are in the traditional Creole songs that Jeffery Broussard heard as a boy playing drums with his father, the late Delton Broussard, and Delton's band, the Lawtell Playboys. Many of those songs originate from much earlier times when Creoles like Amédé Ardoin played the music at house dances where the furniture would be moved outside and the music would give neighbors, weary from long hours in the fields, the energy to dance until early morning.
Born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1967 the youngest of 11 children, Jeffery grew up on a sharecropper farm. Like many Zydeco musicians, his musical career started very early; when he was eight years of age he was playing drums with the Lawtell Playboys. After seventh grade, he left school in order to farm full-time, but whenever he could, he would sneak into the house and get his father's accordion down from the closet and teach himself how to play.
During his teen years, Jeffery played drums in his oldest brother Clinton's band, the Zydeco Machines. Playing the old Clifton Chenier-style triple-note accordion, Clinton let Jeffery play a few songs from time to time, marking the first time Jeffery played the accordion in public. A shy person, Jeffery didn't begin to sing until he joined Zydeco Force, a band whose double clutchin' beat began resounding across Southwest Louisiana at trail rides and in popular clubs a little over a decade ago. After Zydeco Force disbanded, Jeffery reconnected with his Creole heritage partly through his participation as musician and instructor in activities sponsored by Louisiana Folk Roots, which influenced him to learn to play the fiddle.
Jeffery formed the Creole Cowboys in 2006, with D'Jalma Garnier and other members of the Broussard family. Garnier is another great Creole musician whose knowledge is both wide and deep. His career arcs from New Orleans, where his grandfather played Creole jazz and other family members were musicians, to Austin, Texas, where he played guitar in many different musical styles. He further developed his musicianship through an apprenticeship with the legendary Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot.
Links
http://www.jefferybroussard.com/JB-Bio.pdf
http://www.lsue.edu/acadgate/music/creolecowboys.htm
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