Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Rayne-Bo Ramblers first South Louisiana band on national network

by Jim Bradshaw

In 1939, the Rayne-Bo Ramblers, led by LeRoy (Happy Fats) LeBlanc, were invited by CBS radio to represent Louisiana on the Louisiana Progress Program, which was the first time a south Louisiana band was heard on a national radio network.

LeBlanc, a native of Rayne, was born in 1915, the son of a rice farmer. He worked on the farm and in the rice mills, but always wanted to play music.

"I always wanted to buy a guitar," LeBlanc told John Broven in "South to Louisiana: Music of the Cajun Bayous." "I loved music. We were always poor people, my daddy was a rice farmer, and one rice season my mother gave me a sack of rice and I traded it to a druggist for a guitar. ... Just before I started my band I was working at a rice mill for fifteen cents an hour, ten hours a day. ... It was still the Depression. ... (For) a fellow of my age at that time it was hard to find a job, there as nothing to do. So playing music gave us outlet, but back in (those) days we'd play dances for ten dollars for the whole band -- two dollars apiece and two dollars for traveling expenses. "Back then, there was no television, very little radio, the dances were the opportunity to blow off steam. And here ... in Rayne ... there was five or six thousand people and there were three big dance halls. On weekends, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, they'd have dancing (and) they'd all be full. People, would come in, they'd bring them in school buses from the country, every one of them full of people. They'd dance all night long . We'd just start playing and they'd start dancing. Then about ten o'clock they'd have what they call a 'Treat Your Lady' intermission, and then they'd go back (and dance until) twelve or one o'clock. (Then we would) play Home Sweet Home and they all went home."

LeBlanc played for a time with Leo Soileau and the Four Aces, acting as announcer for live radio broadcasts when the band played at the Silver Star near Lake Charles. He also played for a time with Harry Choates in Lake Charles.

After World War II, Happy Fats toured the South with cowboy singing star Tex Ritter and played with him for a short while in Hollywood.

He then returned to south Louisiana and teamed up with fiddler Doc Guidry, who had built his reputation playing with the singing governor, Jimmie Davis. They built a south Louisiana following playing regularly on the radio, and later on television, and found fans statewide -- and farther -- through appearances at the Louisiana Hayride, which was networked to about a quarter of the United States.

During the early years of television, Fats formed the Bayou Buckaroos with Alex Broussard, a rice farmer who portrayed himself as "the barefoot Cajun." They played regularly on KSIG Radio in Crowley, but gained a wider audience with the Mariné Show each Sunday morning on KLFY-TV in Lafayette. (The title came from the French amariné, which means "marinated" or "well seasoned.")