The building at 4801 Magazine Street has been a neighborhood bar since the 1940s. In 1979, Ned Hobgood — a DJ and rock musician from Meridian, Mississippi — bought the property and renamed it Le Bon Temps Roule, a liberally rendered French phrase meaning "let the good times roll." He added a performance space in the back and began booking local musicians, quietly establishing what would become one of the most important small rooms in New Orleans.
The roster of musicians who have played Le Bon Temps reads like a who's who of the contemporary New Orleans scene. Kermit Ruffins held a Wednesday night residency in the late 1990s that became a city institution, and The Soul Rebels have kept their own residency going for years.
The bar's story has a twist that captures something essential about New Orleans. As Magazine Street changed around it, Le Bon Temps was nearly lost — it was saved by an unlikely guardian: Pepper Keenan, the frontman of the rock band Corrosion of Conformity, who became a regular at Le Bon Temps and eventually took over the bar to preserve it. As he told the Times-Picayune: "Le Bon Temps is a classic New Orleans joint. Those places are few and far between."
