Lillian Boutté – A Personal Tribute

Vocalist and New Orleans’ Official Musical Ambassador Lillian Boutté passed away on May 23rd after a lengthy illness that had prevented her from performing since 2016.

I was on stage with her for that final performance as I had been for 20 years previously.

The late Richard Speed, a jazz promoter in Oxfordshire, brought Lillian to the UK each year for gigs and workshops and, in 1996 invited me to join her for a gig at The Lamb in Buckland; the regular end of tour ‘knees-up’.

I didn’t know then that she’d just lost her longtime friend and musical director Edward Frank, a wonderful pianist and arranger from New Orleans.

She made me feel very welcome and, after the gig, invited me for coffee the next day saying “bring your diary!”

She proceeded to fill my diary with 150 gigs covering the next year and within a few days I was in Copenhagen onstage with some wonderful musicians from New Orleans such as trumpeter Leroy Jones, trombonist Craig Klein and drummer Shannon Powell.

Lillian had moved to Germany in the early 80’s and married clarinetist Thomas l’Ettiene; a man that has since become one of my dearest friends.

That, in many ways, was Lillian’s great gift. She brought people together. People that have become lifelong friends and associates. Everybody that I still tour with around Europe is a connection that leads back to Lillian and we often sit after hours and tell stories of how great she was as a performer and as a person.

She opened the door to European clubs and festivals for so many New Orleans musicians and was utterly tireless in the way she promoted the music and culture of her native city.

I was lucky to witness her magic every night on the bandstand.

Genre is something that didn’t matter to her. We would play traditional jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, funk and American Songbook all in the space of an hour set.

She delivered each and every song directly from her heart with an honesty that I’ve not witnessed before or since with the possible exception of watching footage of her hero Louis Armstrong!

Every night she would hold an audience in the palm of her hand and have them all singing, dancing, laughing and crying and, despite knowing her routine well she would do something with a phrase or a note that would pierce my heart on every single gig!

I will always be convinced that, in her prime, there is nobody that could follow her on stage. She owned every stage she graced and immediately let everybody in the band and the audience know that she was there for them. It was truly magic!

She did it by simply being herself. She was the epitome of the phrase ‘a natural’.

It came easy for her. She would smile, open her mouth and sing and everybody was instantly in love with her. She never sang a note for herself.

Once, at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival she was sick and had lost her voice. We urged her to cancel the gig. She refused. What we saw was incredible as she talked and croaked her way through each song. Somehow, it was one of the finest performances I ever saw her perform and I still can’t explain why. She was magic!

Offstage she was fun, positive and incredibly kind and thoughtful. She never turned her back on anyone that wanted to talk with her for a few minutes.

At the Ascona Jazz Festival in Switzerland; a festival she was instrumental in establishing, there is a promendade along the lake which would take about five minutes to walk if you were alone. With Lillian, it could take over an hour as she would stop and chat with anyone that said ‘hello’. She seemed to exist purely to make people feel good.

She would often end a gig with “What A Wonderful World”. We still joke about how long we had to hold the dominant chord while she jumped offstage and went round shaking hands and hugging every audience member before joining us back on stage for the last line!

As a vocalist she had a voice that could be rough and sweet at the same time. She had a rare ability to really connect with the lyric and she delivered each lyric beautifully. She had a sense of time and rhythm that was the best I’ve ever heard. She had a delivery that could be vaudevillian one minute and intensely dramatic the next. Her comic timing was superb.

For twenty years she was my boss, my friend and my surrogate Mum. We would joke that I’d be wheeling her onstage in her 90’s “like Alberta Hunter”. How I wish that could have been my job for life.

Sadly it wasn’t to be but, I will always have those wonderful memories of my time with her; travelling the world, laughing, crying and making music; really feeling part of the life of someone very very special.

Rest in peace Dear Lillian, we will all miss you.

Lillian Theresa Boutté. Born New Orleans 6 August 1949. Died 23 May 2025