Jeffery Broussard is a master of the Creole la-la tradition and one of the best accordionists in Louisiana. Born in Lafayette in 1967, the youngest of 11 children, he started on drums in his father Delton Broussard's band at eight and picked up the accordion as a teenager, playing with his brother Clinton's Zydeco Machines. In the mid-1980s he co-founded Zydeco Force with bassist Robbie Robinson, driving the nouveau zydeco sound across the country; he left in 2005 to form Jeffery Broussard & the Creole Cowboys, dedicated to keeping the old tradition alive.
The Cowboys' records — Keeping the Tradition Alive!, Return of the Creole (2011), and Boots and Boujee (2022) — earned Broussard the 2007 Accordionist of the Year title and a place in the Louisiana Folk Life Center Hall of Fame. He writes for the tradition too: his tribute song "Buckwheat" honors the late Buckwheat Zydeco, his musical hero.
You'll know him on sight — straw hat, toothpick, accordion, and a road band that has played Russia and everywhere between. He is a regular at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival, and his label, the Flat Town Music Company, handles his records.
