Mary Rose-Anne Bolduc, born Travers, (June 4, 1894 – February 20, 1941) was a musician and singer of French Canadian music.

Her style combined the traditional folk music of Ireland and Quebec, usually in upbeat, comedic songs.

Mary Rose-Anne Travers "La Bolduc" was born in Newport, Quebec, in the Gaspé region.

The family was extremely poor, but Bolduc attended school for a time, becoming literate in French.

[1] Her only music teacher was her father, who taught her how to play the instruments that were traditional in Quebec culture of the era: the fiddle, accordion, harmonica, spoons and jaw harp.

The family did not own a record player, piano or sheet music, so Bolduc learned jigs and folk songs from memory or by ear.

She was giving casual public performances by the spring of 1908, when she played the accordion at the logging camp where she worked as a cook and her father as a lumberjack.

The family was quite poor, and in 1921 when Édouard had difficulty finding work they decided to move to Springfield, Massachusetts.

Among her friends were amateur musicians who sometimes performed with the Veillées du bon vieux temps at the Monument-National under Conrad Gauthier.

[1] Bolduc was recommended by folk singer Ovila Légaré to musical producer Roméo Beaudry of the Compo Company.

[4] Bolduc sang accompaniments or played instruments for recordings by Juliette Béliveau, Eugène Daignault, Ovila Légaré, Alfred Montmarquette, Adélard St. Jean, and possibly others.

In March 1931 she took an offer from a burlesque company at the Théâtre Arlequin de Québec to perform as their main act.

As the 1930s progressed, Bolduc's record sales began to slump, but her income from touring remained good.

[4] Other children occasionally appeared as backup singers, and her daughter Lucienne recorded L'Enfant volé.

She began radiation treatment at the Radium Institute in Montreal, and engaged in practically no musical endeavours at this point, making no stage appearances for a full year.

[1] Her self-written songs often used existing melodies from folk tunes or dances, combined with lyrics she wrote herself.

[8][non-primary source needed] For instance, she wrote the song Les Cinq Jumelles about the Dionne Quintuplets, which was set to the tune of "Little Brown Jug".

[8] One such song was Mademoiselle, dites-moi donc, which she recorded with Ovila Légaré and featured the two of them bantering and flirting comedically.

One such song by Bolduc is La chanson du bavard, which notably employs an introduction inviting the listener to hear a tale, as is common in broadside ballads.

[8] Other topical ballads by Bolduc include Les Américains about Americans coming to Montreal during Prohibition to obtain liquor and the unrecorded Si je pouvais tenir Hitler, which she wrote a few days after the outbreak of World War II.

[9][non-primary source needed] Her music relied heavily upon the harmonica and the fiddle, the traditional instruments of reels in Quebec.

[8] The recordings were marketed to working class francophone audiences, in small towns and rural areas where people had traditional values.

Her humorous images of daily life, her realism in depicting the society of the time, and her satirical characters all appear in the work of subsequent singer-songwriters.

[11] Although it was received poorly by critics of the day, Bolduc's use of colloquialisms and working-class vocabulary influenced future musicians like Gilles Vigneault and Clémence DesRochers.

[13] In 2002, Mary Bolduc was made a MasterWorks honoree by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.