Bob and Betty Began The Band

Of course I’m talking about the Landry Family Band.  The band consisted of my parents, Bob and Betty Landry, and all of their kids – Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie.  But it didn’t really begin that way.  The germ of it started in 1950, when young Betty Lou Bucklin went to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for Solo and Ensemble Festival.  She was a junior in high school, and she was a baritone player.  She was from the small town of Hathaway, Louisiana, and was unfamiliar with her new surroundings. She decided to ask someone for directions, and that someone was Bob Landry from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

My dad was in college at LSU at the time.  He was four years older than my mom.  When Betty Lou graduated from high school the following year, she went to McNeese in Lake Charles.  It just so happened that Bob had decided to return to McNeese because it had become a four-year university.  So they met again and went out on a date almost immediately.  They both played baritone in the band, so they started playing music together then.  They were married in 1952 and children followed.

My dad was a band director and chorus instructor.  He taught at LaGrange in Lake Charles, at Elton High School, and at Northside Junior High in Jennings.  We grew up with music all around us.  We all learned how to play the ukulele at a very young age and then transitioned over to the guitar when we were older.  My mom was a piano player, and we always had a piano in the house.  One of the songs that she’d play for us when we were small is “Boop Boop Did’m Dad’m Waddam Choo!”  She went to town singing about those three little fishies swimming over that dam!  It is a crying shame that there is not a recording of her singing that song.  She played it for all of her grandchildren, as well.  Surely they must have fond memories of that.  What say you, niblings?

In the early to mid 1970s Mama and Daddy started playing together at events.  I suppose part of the reason was to make some extra money, but for some reason I always thought that they were mainly doing it because they liked to sing and entertain people.  Our family would sometimes sing together at mass at the big Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Jennings.  But we kids didn’t sing with them when they had those first gigs.  Jodie went off to college in 1971 and got married in 1973.  She and her husband lived in Lake Charles at the married student housing.  Rob was off to Louisiana Tech in 1973, and Karen was graduating from Jennings High School in 1975.  The rest of us were in high school and junior high.

That’s about the time that this photo was taken.  I don’t know where it was taken or who took it.  I don’t think any of us kids were there.  I don’t know how people knew about my parents being available to hire for events.  It’s not like they were able to post this photo online anywhere.  That wouldn’t come around for several years.  It must have been by word of mouth.  Then somehow my dad connected with Bill Spreafico, who was the manager for the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles.  That led to the family becoming the entertainment there beginning in June of 1976.  At first we played Wednesday through Saturday nights every week.  After about a year, it was changed to just Friday and Saturday nights.  We had a lot of pizzas that first year!  They were pepperoni and mushroom for me.  We also had the Super Spuds pretty often, too.

But we didn’t all sing along at first.  We started out a bit shy.  My mom coaxed me into singing “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle, Jangle, Jingle” by offering me a one-dollar bill.  That was in addition to the five dollars they would give us for playing along and helping to set things up.  It wasn’t too long before we all had our own repertoire of songs that we’d sing.  We all got along really well, so there was no fighting over who gets to sing when.  We would take our turns when we could.  It was all for fun anyway!  At least that’s the way I remember it.

I can’t go without commenting about the additional creatures in this photo.  Are those real squirrels that I see climbing in that tree to the left?  And what are they doing?  It looks like they’re trying to carry away the cords for the microphone that Daddy is singing in.  I don’t even think he noticed them.  Or maybe they are just decorations in the tree?  I’ve never heard of such a thing.  

There was another thing I wanted to say about this photo.  It was taken in 1975.  It’s amazing that that was fifty years ago!  When I think about that, I always tell myself that I’m living in the future.  Am I right?