LeDoux, Chris

Bareback & Notable • Inducted 2005

Chris LeDoux was a bonafide, hard-to-beat cowboy long before he was an entertainer. He grew up in an Air Force family and started competing in junior rodeos in Texas, winning the all-around title at the first one he entered. He won the Wyoming high school state bareback riding championship, and in college he captured the 1969 National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association bareback riding title. From there, LeDoux turned professional and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo four times, earning the 1976 world bareback riding crown. Throughout his career, LeDoux competed in all three roughstock events.

Musically, LeDoux was just as determined and just as talented, learning to play the harmonica at 12, and teaching himself to pick a guitar at 14. He wrote and created his first song, “Bareback Jack,” during his high school days in Cheyenne, Wyo. Rodeo folks knew and loved LeDoux and his band, The Western Underground, long before Garth Brooks included his name in the hit song, “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old).” After that, the race to acquire LeDoux’s music was on and in 2005 he was posthumously awarded the Academy of Country Music Pioneer Award. LeDoux recorded music with such top entertainers as Brooks, Bon Jovi, Toby Keith, and Charlie Daniels. In fact, Daniels treasures a hand-sculpted bronze created and given to him by the multi-talented LeDoux.

LeDoux’s music was clear, simple, direct, straight from life and the rodeo road. Throughout his life, LeDoux was a man of word, a devoted father and a loving husband to his wife, Peggy.

World Championships: 1

Bareback Riding: 1976

Born: October 2, 1948 in Biloxi, Mississippi
Died: March 9, 2005 in Casper, Wyoming

NFR Qualifications: 5

Black Hills Roundup / Belle Fourche, SD
Bareback Riding: 1975 (tie)

Deadwood Days of ’76 Rodeo / Deadwood, SD
Bareback Riding: 1974

Guymon Pioneer Days Rodeo / Guymon, OK
Bareback Riding: 1971

Ogden Pioneer Days Rodeo / Ogden, UT
Bareback Riding: 1973 (tie)