Super Mom

Lois Boileau has the best of two worlds. She presides over Le Cafe, the popular room in Sherman Oaks, and the gourmet market next door. As a singer, she can hire herself to perform in the Room Upstairs, an intimate 70-seat venue over Le Cafe. She’ll be singing there tonight, backed by Lou Forestieri’s quartet.

Born in Hollywood, Boileau was a vocal natural from age 3. “My mother noticed I had perfect pitch and can sing difficult songs. At 11, I began operatic training, but I always listened to jazz--Ella, Billie Holiday, Sarah, Dinah, Peggy Lee.”

Before her high school graduation, her career was under way: Local jobs, shows in Las Vegas, Civic Light Opera. But she says, “Professionalism scared me. I really wanted to be a wife and mother.”

Married in her teens, she had three children. After the marriage ended she found “a marvelous man whose art work you can see in the Room Upstairs. He was my second husband, a clinical psychologist. I became a lay therapist and worked with him for 17 years, until he died some 10 years ago.” She is now married to Jay Hodes, a physician.

Her son Dale had the idea of launching a sidewalk cafe. The restaurant opened in June, 1979; the following New Year’s Eve Lois Boileau introduced the talent policy upstairs. For a while she was the only singer; later, with the help of Bill Henderson, Joyce Collins, Sue Raney and others, the music expanded from two to five to seven nights a week, with Boileau concentrating on the business end and singing a couple of nights a month.

Boileau’s children all help out.

“My daughter Diana, who also does film editing, handles the beverages and bar; Dale, my older son, books the talent--he’s also going into personal management--and Paul operates the kitchen, is the comptroller, and he’s a computer whiz.

“Yes, they all have peripheral outside interests, but believe me, when you’re in the restaurant business, your other interests have to be peripheral.”