1929
October 18 — Born in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans, to Edward and
Bertha Scott Busch. Family moves to Tremé, two blocks from Congo Square, the following year.
Source: Kennedy Booklet, Early Childhood section
1935
Enters Craig Elementary School. Classmates include future musicians Dooky Chase,
Warren Bell, and Benjamin “Benny” Powell (later of the Count Basie Band).
Source: Kennedy Booklet
c.1941–42
Leaves New Orleans at age 12 for The Piney Woods Country Life School,
Mississippi, where she becomes a professional musician, touring and performing with the
International Sweethearts of Rhythm and the Swinging Rays of Rhythm.
Source: official funeral program, “The Extraordinary Life of Yvonne
‘Bonie’ Busch,” March 8, 2014
1942
April 11 — Appears in the Louisiana Weekly with the Swinging Rays of Rhythm,
at age 12.
Source: The_Power_of_One.pdf production timeline notes
1943–47
Returns to New Orleans in 1943 to complete her education at Gilbert Academy
High School; moved from trumpet to baritone horn to trombone by director T. LeRoy Davis. Wins the
Tri-State Music Festival in 1947 playing Graff's Concerto for Trombone; completes studies at
Gilbert the same year.
Source: official funeral program; Kennedy biographical material; The_Power_of_One.pdf timeline
1951
Graduates Southern University; hired at age 22 by the School Board's Supervisor
of Music. First assignment: Booker T. Washington Senior High, where she finds damaged instruments and
no usable method books — and begins paying for repairs and sheet music herself.
Source: Yvonne Busch, oral history interview [00:08:26; 00:10:38]
1951–58
Itinerant teacher across Clark Senior High, McDonogh 41, and Craig Elementary.
Recommends the student players who become the Hawketts; the band records “Mardi Gras Mambo”
in 1954.
Source: Kennedy Booklet, Clark Senior High section
1958
Assigned to the newly opened George Washington Carver Senior High, where she
remains for the rest of her full-time career.
Source: Kennedy Booklet
1961–62
The Louisiana Weekly names the Carver Band its “1961 Band of the Year”;
she is named Carver's Teacher of the Year in 1962.
Source: Kennedy Booklet, Carver Senior High section
1965
Hurricane Betsy destroys the Carver campus. Busch and the school community
rebuild.
Source: production Act 3 draft notes
1974–78
Ellis Marsalis, Clyde Kerr Jr., Roger Dickerson, and Paul Batiste complete
student-teaching under her supervision.
Source: Kennedy Booklet, Student Teachers section
1983
Retires after 32 years in the New Orleans Public Schools.
Source: Kennedy Booklet
1995 & 1998
Receives the Louisiana Jazz Federation's first Jazz Educator Award (1995) and the
New Orleans International Music Colloquium's first Clyde Kerr Sr. Award for Music Education (1998).
Source: Kennedy Booklet, Awards section
2005
Hurricane Katrina floods and destroys her Lower Ninth Ward home. She relocates to
Texas, then later to Westwego, Louisiana, near relatives.
Source: Al Kennedy, oral history interview [00:13:25–00:15:45]
2014
Dies February 28, at age 84, at the home of her nephew Keith Gant. A Mass of
Christian Burial is held March 8, 2014, at St. David Catholic Church, New Orleans; interment at
Providence Memorial Park, Metairie. She is survived by her sister Elaine Busch Burns, nephews Kaven
A. McIntosh and Keith J. Gant, and extended family, students, and colleagues. Honorary pallbearers
include former students Sullivan Dabney, Herlin Riley, and Leonard Smith III, and historian Al
Kennedy, Ph.D.
Source: official funeral program, “The Extraordinary Life of Yvonne
‘Bonie’ Busch,” Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home, March 8, 2014
