Music in the Family Part I

I promised last week that I would post something about music.  I shared a post on Facebook this morning.  It was a video from two years ago of our Landry Family Band reprising an old Dixieland song “Jada.”  It was me, my sisters Karen and Jamie and my mom and dad playing at Villa Maria Retirement Center in Lake Charles.  We were all in town to find an assisted living home for my parents.  I didn’t realize at the time that it would be the last “performance” I would have with them.  A bittersweet video to watch.

Most people knew us as a musical family, but there have been many musicians in the family through the years on both sides of the family.  That made it difficult for me to decide where I would start this musical series.  But then that little video popped up today as a jumping off point.  So I’ll start the series by going back some years before the video I mentioned.  Some of you may be thinking of the Shakey’s days where the Landry Family Band had their heyday, but I’ve already shared that before.

I’m taking it a little further back than that.  Shakey’s was 40 years ago and I’m going back 26 years before that when my mom Betty Lou Bucklin was a girl in high school.  This is a photo of her with her younger sister Loris and their brother Austin.  Mama played the baritone and aunt Loris played the trombone.  I’m not sure what Austin is doing with that ukelele.  He doesn’t seem to be very pleased with it.  Maybe it was out of tune or missing a string.  Maybe he didn’t think it went along with the baritone and trombone too well.  Whatever the case may be, he doesn’t seem happy in the photo.

But I’m happy that I found this photo.  I don’t ever remember seeing it when growing up.  I found the negative last year when I was going through some stuff that mom gave me.  The photo was taken around 1950, which was around the time that Mama met Daddy.  Young Betty Lou visited LSU in Baton Rouge on April 27, 1950, to compete in the State Music Festival Clinic where she earned a Superior rating on her performance on that baritone.

My mom was never good with directions.  I don’t know how many times she got lost when trying to get somewhere.  Most of the time it was a hindrance, but in this situation it proved to be beneficial.  She was at LSU and she needed help with directions.  The person she found to help was none other than a college student by the name of Bob Landry.  The other interesting thing about that meeting is that it was five years to the day prior to the birth of their second child, my brother Rob.

It was rather appropriate that their first meeting was centered around music.  My mom liked to tell that story about their encounter.  She kept the certificate she won that day and wrote a little bit about it on the back of it in 2013: “He’s been leading me around for over 60 years.”  Together til the end.