S02E01 – Nellie Lutcher, Louisiana, 1910

Nellie era un’enfant prodige. Avrebbero detto così se fosse stata un ragazzino bianco dei quartieri alti. 

Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1910

The flames grew and grew, someone had thrown a damn cigarette in the trash can on a sidewalk on North Ryan Street between Blance’s Liquor Store and the Old Opera House Saloon. The place was crowded. Like every night, black boys packed into that place to play, listen, and dance. Between wandering blues singers and piano challenges, the atmosphere was always hot. Some white boys passed by. They insistently paced back and forth. Some glared inward with contempt and anger. Others, with eyes full of envy, strained their ears to hear that music so different. But that evening the only sound that really attracted attention was the scream of a boy from the street.

Nobody knows what exactly happened, they say a cigarette thrown away still lit… but who knows? At the time we threw cigarettes on the ground, certainly not in the trash. Someone accused the whites, the whites accused the blacks but they were street accusations, nobody took them seriously.

They all rushed out, the bartender jumping over the bar, the musicians dropping their instruments on the ground. The pleasantly warm April wind took those flames and transformed them into hell. In less than half an hour the fire had engulfed the entire block, the saloon was destroyed like everything in it. The flames grew and the firefighters could only watch. Those buildings and houses were all made of wood, from the foundations to the roof. Of course, let’s not expect huge buildings in Lake Charles Louisana, maximum two or three floors, a small basement. A boy walked in disbelief through the neighborhood, the flames had spread, people were throwing their things out of the window before leaving their homes in the hope of saving something from the flames. The wind was blowing the flames to the northeast. They had taken the town hall and were running to the church where about twenty people were working with hammers and crowbars, carrying out metal pipes and strange objects. Isaac was walking through the neighborhood, shocked and in disbelief, when he saw the scene as he passed in front of the church.

A group of people were dismantling the organ to carry it out of the church and save it from the fire. Isaac was playing the bass guitar in the saloon when the fire broke out, he had to leave it there, in the flames, it was too bulky and he lost it in the escape. That organ was even more cumbersome, it made no sense, but he felt he had to lend a hand. 

There was this girl, Susie, a very good musician. She had learned to play the organ, the minister had taught her, at first.  Then another lady who came from outside, a friend of the …. well it doesn’t matter now. When the fire broke out Susie ran to the pastor and practically broke down the door. She dragged him and his assistant into the church and they began to dismantle the organ. Other faithful and simple passers-by joined in. It was a heroic undertaking, one of those moments …. you know …. where you see the strength of the community. Beautiful.  Well, it was of not use at all, on the contrary. The facade of the house next door suddenly collapsed onto the street, the central body of the organ (the one with the keys and everything) was right there and immediately caught fire. The church? That only burned partially, the organ would have been saved too, if they had left it there. 

Isaac and Susie were sitting on the sidewalk in front of the church, the fire was under control now, more than 100 buildings were totally destroyed, a disaster, one of those disasters to be remembered for centuries. The two young people, almost the same age, did not know each other before, they were musicians in the same town but he played ragtime in dive bars, she played sacred music in church. Two black young people who had lost their instruments, desperate, heartbroken. Two young people who at that moment embraced each other and never left each other. 

Nellie was a child prodigy. They would have said so if she had been a white kid from the upper classes. But Nellie was just a bright little girl with a large family in a neighborhood that had recently been built to house those who had lost their homes in the great fire. She was the eldest of Isaac and Susie’s ten children. Isaac worked in a packing plant and went to clubs at night to play bass.  Susie was the organ player at New Sunlight Baptist Church and made ends meet by doing laundry for others. Helping out around the house was Eugene, a pianist friend of Susie’s who had given Nellie a few lessons for fun. 

That little girl was a little devil. To get her to the piano they had to put books under her backside. Her mother would take her to church when she played, Nellie would stand behind her and watch. She was 8 when she played her first full mass on the organ. She knew everything by heart.

During the day she studied the piano with Eugene, she spent weekends playing and singing gospel music at church, and on weeknights she eavesdropped on her father playing swing with Clarence Hart’s Imperial Jazz Band in the garage. We can’t say that there was a lack of music in that family, and yet she was the only one, the eldest of nine, to inherit that talent. In the remote province of Louisiana, Nellie was lucky. She had a school at home.

The real mess for the girl was that day in 1928, yes I think it was 1928. Ma Rainey was on tour and that crazy fool from Georgia Tom Dorsey, for some reason or how, couldn’t be found. They had three dates in one day, one of those days when you make a lot of money and that chatty black ass couldn’t be found. A strange character, a musician by night and an evangelist by day. It was Clarence Hart who mentioned Nellie’s name, the mother when she heard it … they say she came home armed with a rifle.

Ma Rainey toured with Thomas Dorsey, Tampa Red and other Wildcat runaways. Ma Rainey was one of the tough ones, she performed waving ostrich feathers but always kept a gun in her purse. Today they would call her “divisive.” She was divisive, you either loved her or hated her.

Female blues singers in the 20s literally didn’t care. They were outside the bourgeois logic of wealthy white men. They didn’t submit to men or morals and they said what they wanted. And if you didn’t agree, well they always had a gun with them.

She had just recorded a new song, “prove it on me blues”. The lyrics said…

I went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must have been women, because I don’t like men. They say I do it, but no one saw me. Of course you have to have proof.

Well, you see, it wasn’t a simple matter. Ma Rainey was a lesbian icon, she went around provoking, she drank and she was old enough to slap anyone who bothered her. But she was also someone who counted among black musicians. Everyone knew that a black pianist would never have made her way into the white music, that there was no place for her in academia, that she could be as good as she wanted but getting out of Lake Charles… difficult. It was a unique opportunity, yes, but was it a situation suitable for a 14-year-old girl? What had Clarence thought of mentioning her name?

The case shocked the entire neighborhood. No one had ever seen Susie and Isaac argue. Should this little girl play with Ma Rainey or not? Everyone had an opinion about it, from the pastor to Isaac’s colleagues to the principal of the school. Of course, no one bothered to ask Nellie.

When they ask about you – Nellie Lutcher

Nellie played with Ma Rainey, it was great. Obviously she didn’t become a lesbian, or an alcoholic. She was a kid and she remained a kid. But it was cool for her, it was the kind of situation that puts you in front of fear, your ego, yourself. It was the kind of event that conditions you for the future.
Nellie’s career was the classic one you would expect from a black girl of those years. The move to a big city, the constant struggle to free herself, to fight stereotypes first racial and then, no less, gender. Yes, there were some black pianists in that period, but the road was far from smooth. At twenty years old in Los Angeles she played in some groups. Of course, there was nothing like in Louisiana. There were blacks who had businesses, ran clubs, record labels. The problem of “what to play” did not arise. Black? Blues, jazz, gospel, stuff like that.

She played piano only in clubs and the customers went crazy for her. Every now and then she sang some Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith blues although mainly she thought about playing. But when she sang, well she had that swing. The audience encouraged her more and more to sing!

Nellie’s real success came at 35. A Capitol Records executive heard her singing on a radio talent show and signed her right away. From paid tips, she quickly switched to fees of thousands of dollars. She recorded wonderful records like “Fine Brown Frame”, “Hurry on Down”, and was omnipresent on the radio. She duetted with Nat King Cole on world tours in the most “in” clubs and venues of the time. She played and sang even when pop music changed in the 60s and so did the audience. She continued when in the 90s this music was rediscovered and she was invited to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and many other festivals. She sang and played until she died, at 94 years old happy and satisfied. Her music is listened and danced today in many ballrooms around the world. We are sure that she is happy about this.

This is the story of a great fire, of a destroyed organ. A love story and a story of a provincial child prodigy who became one of the most famous musicians in America.

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Il podcast è scritto da Guido Maria Bianchini e Marta Leoni.
Voci di Guido Maria Bianchini e Marcella Maini.
Traduzioni di Silvia Civa.
Sigla e montaggi di Guido Maria Bianchini.