Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 46) N ellie’s path was already fixed when well-known Southern blues singer Ma Rainey came through Lake Charles somewhere around 1924. Gertrude Pridgett Rainey and her husband William toured the South with their song and dance act as a part of “Tolliver’s Circus, The Musical Extravaganza,” and “The Rabbit Foot Minstrels,” traveling entertainment that frequently passed through Lake Charles. Ma Rainey, considered by blues historians to be the “Mother of the Blues,” had mentored legendary Bessie Smith from 1912-15 when Smith traveled with the Raineys. On one of their trips through Lake Charles, Ma Rainey, scheduled to perform at Buster Mancuso’s Palace Theatre, found herself without a piano player. Mancuso, who had heard Nellie play at the Majestic Hotel, recruited her, age twelve, for the performance. Before her mother would give her permission for Nellie to play, she consulted Mrs. Reynaud, who agreed that Nellie played well enough for the performance. Nellie was hooked. By the time Nellie was fourteen, she was certain that music was her destiny. Replacing the pianist in the Imperial Jazz Band, Nellie left school, confident that the skills she had developed from her exemplary teachers at the Second Ward School would stand her in good stead. In her interview with St. Mary, she reflected on her school experience: “I had some excellent teachers at the Second Ward School Including Bessie Dickerson, an English teacher who placed a great deal of emphasis on diction. Then there was my music teacher, Mrs. Reynaud, who also taught me mathematics. And she was a mathematician like you wouldn’t believe. And there was NURTURING MENTORS Irma Curry, my science teacher, who was excellent. These teachers believed it was their duty to see that we were well educated, and they worked hard to fulfill this duty. They demanded our respect, just as our parents did, and we gave it to them.” Once Nellie left school behind, she spent the next five or six years traveling in Texas and Louisiana with the Imperial Jazz Band and the Southern Rhythm Band. No longer satisfied with playing lines set down by other musicians, Nellie began experimenting with her own arrangements — something she had been trained to do as a young girl by her father who encouraged improvisation. Her early training, however, was strictly traditional. She noted in an interview with Whitney Balliett, jazz critic for The New Yorker, that improvisation was not a gift her music teacher had: “Mrs. Reynaud couldn’t improvise one note. If there was a fly on the music sheet, she’d play that, too. She wanted me to have correct fingering, and she wanted me to learn to read. She discovered right away that I knew how to fake things, and she watched my ear all the time She touched my life forever with her marvelous way of teaching But she couldn’t play anything that wasn’t already written down.” In a 2003 interview with Leslie Berman, Nellie gives her father credit for passing along his musical gifts to her: “Eugenia Reynaud taught me to read music. Oh yes, she taught me. I could play maybe a little tune like they say play by ear, but she taught me to read music. So I learned how to read. My father was a musician too. Now papa taught himself. So I kind of give credit to my father because I think I inherited his As a child, Nellie Lutcher (left) played piano for $2 a month at the New Sunlight Baptist Church in Lake Charles. She is pictured with her cousin, Annabelle Nance, and her sister, Florida. 46 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009
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