1. La Bolduc's style combined the traditional folk music of Ireland and Quebec, usually in upbeat, comedic songs.
43 Facts About La Bolduc
1. 2.
Mary Rose-Anne Travers "La Bolduc" was born in Newport, Quebec, in the Gaspe region.
3.
La Bolduc's father, Lawrence Travers, was an Anglophone of Irish heritage, and her mother, Adeline Cyr, was of mixed French Canadian and Mi'kmaq heritage.
4.
La Bolduc's family included five full siblings, and an additional six half-siblings from her father's first marriage.
5.
The family was extremely poor, but La Bolduc attended school for a time, becoming literate in French.
6.
La Bolduc learned traditional music from the two heritages, both Irish melodies and French-Canadian folk tunes.
7.
The family did not own a record player, piano or sheet music, so La Bolduc learned jigs and folk songs from memory or by ear.
8.
La Bolduc was giving casual public performances by the spring of 1908, when she played the accordion at the logging camp where she worked as a cook and her father as a lumberjack.
9.
In 1908, at the age of thirteen, La Bolduc was sent to live with her half-sister Mary-Ann in Montreal, Quebec.
10.
La Bolduc was paid $15 per month, in addition to room and board.
11.
When Conrad Gauthier's troupe was missing a folk violinist for a performance, one of La Bolduc's friends arranged for her to fill in for the absent performer.
12.
La Bolduc became a regular player with Gauthier's troupe by 1928, playing the violin or the jaw harp.
13.
La Bolduc was recommended by folk singer Ovila Legare to musical producer Romeo Beaudry of the Compo Company.
14.
La Bolduc made her first recording in April 1929, the French folk song Y'a longtemps que je couche par terre on side A, and an instrumental reel on side B The record was a commercial flop.
15.
La Bolduc earned a total of $450 from the sales and became a household name in Quebec.
16.
La Bolduc sang accompaniments or played instruments for recordings by Juliette Beliveau, Eugene Daignault, Ovila Legare, Alfred Montmarquette, Adelard St Jean, and possibly others.
17.
La Bolduc's first headlining performance came in November 1930, in Lachute at a costume ball.
18.
La Bolduc formed her own touring troupe in 1932, named La Troupe du bon vieux temps.
19.
La Bolduc stuck to her folk music style as the record buying public turned increasingly to jazz and popular music.
20.
La Bolduc produced eighteen records in 1930 and 10 in 1931, but with her declining sales she recorded nothing from July 1932 until she released a single album in March 1935, and then four more in 1936.
21.
La Bolduc was seriously injured in June 1937 in Riviere-du-Loup when her tour company's car was in a head-on collision.
22.
La Bolduc suffered a broken leg, a broken nose and a concussion.
23.
La Bolduc was sent to a hospital in Rimouski for treatment, where doctors discovered a cancerous tumour.
24.
La Bolduc began radiation treatment at the Radium Institute in Montreal, and engaged in practically no musical endeavours at this point, making no stage appearances for a full year.
25.
The suit ended badly as La Bolduc did not use banks and had no record of her income to prove loss of income.
26.
La Bolduc began limited touring again in the summer of 1938, only in the Montreal area.
27.
La Bolduc made a radio broadcast in January 1939, and made two recordings in February 1939.
28.
La Bolduc died of cancer on February 20,1941, in Montreal and was buried in the Cimetiere Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
29.
La Bolduc never had any formal music lessons, and developed her own style under the influence of her father's teaching and the musical traditions of Irish folk music and Quebecois folk tunes.
30.
La Bolduc's songs tended to be happy and comical with lively rhythms.
31.
La Bolduc often used the technique of the enumerative song, which lists something such as foods or tasks.
32.
La Bolduc employed the traditional French folk song style of the dialogue song, usually a duet with a man, where the song is a conversation or debate between the man and the woman.
33.
La Bolduc often wrote in the style derived from traditional English broadside ballads, which tell current news to the tunes of traditional songs.
34.
One such song by La Bolduc is La chanson du bavard, which notably employs an introduction inviting the listener to hear a tale, as is common in broadside ballads.
35.
La Bolduc's music relied heavily upon the harmonica and the fiddle, the traditional instruments of reels in Quebec.
36.
La Bolduc's singing adopted a nasal style, and her pitch was relaxed, both of which are found traditionally.
37.
La Bolduc's singing often featured turlutage, which derives from Irish and Scottish musical traditions.
38.
La Bolduc's touring troupe La Troupe du bon vieux temps gave fairly consistent performances.
39.
La Bolduc closed with some of her newest or most topical songs.
40.
La Bolduc's lyrics are predominantly French, but frequently include a few words or lines in English.
41.
La Bolduc attempted to include her family in her activities as much as possible.
42.
La Bolduc was the most widely known folk music singer of Quebec in the 1930s.
43.
In 2002, Mary La Bolduc was made a MasterWorks honoree by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.