Nellie Lutcher - Biography
By Jonny Whiteside
Singer-pianist Nellie Lutcher's brand of pianistic hip was one of the postwar R&B explosion's grooviest sounds, a mix of cool jazz and smoldering intensity that sold millions of records and represented the often overlooked late '40s cocktail blues with rare, crafty charm. Lutcher established a style and sound completely removed from that of other female blues performers; as former Down Beat editor and Capitol A&R man Dave Dexter Jr. put it, "Nellie Lutcher whipped a Steinway like Earl Hines and sang hot, even on slow love ballads." Her sound was an engaging blend of whimsy and sophistication that conjured both the earthy and the elegant, and the public could not get enough of it. Among Capitol Records' biggest sellers circa 1947-1950, Lutcher influenced singers LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, Eartha Kitt, and Nina Simone--and also significantly prepared the male-dominated market for them. One of the most under-appreciated and overlooked performers of the postwar, pre-rock period in American pop music, she was also one of the first black American female headliners to tour Europe, another significant feat for the early 1950s.
Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana on October 15, 1912, she was the eldest of ten children. By age eight, her parents signed her up for music lessons, and by age 11 she was serving as an assistant to the music director at the New Sunlight Baptist Church. When Lutcher was fourteen, Ma Rainey, the legendary "mother of the blues," was booked at Lake Charles's Imperial Theater, but lacked a pianist. Lutcher's father was a bassist with the Imperial's house orchestra, and despite her youth, Lutcher got the job. "So that was how I got to know who Ma Rainey was." Lutcher said. "I had never played blues, but she had her own charts and it was a great experience." She spent six years beside her father in the Imperial orchestra pit, and was next hired by the Southern Rhythm Boys, a hot jazz band whose members were mostly out of New Orleans. She had found her calling. Wearied by a long string of one-nighter gigs, made all the more grueling by the constraints any black unit faced in the South of 1930s, Lutcher pulled up stakes in '35 and boarded a train bound for Los Angeles.
There, Lutcher expanded her presentation and audience: "I didn't have singing in mind, didn't even start singing until I got to California. And I began working the white clubs,” she said. Over the next ten years, Lutcher developed the hybrid style that eventually catapulted her to international prominence. "Nellie set the pace for a lot of people," R&B pianist Charles Brown said. "She was ahead of Nat Cole, [another] black artist playing pop numbers in a manner drawn from the blues. But Lutcher is really in a class of her own. There is no one like her. She plays uniquely and has a graceful way of playing piano that no one can compete with, and she's tough."
She was spent the war years playing piano in the Club Royale, one of countless Los Angeles joints hosting an army of aspiring musicians. "It's very difficult to develop a style when you're always traveling," Lutcher said, "but it was at the Royale that I had the chance to really work on what I did." She refined her music, transforming pop and blues influences into a mix of eroticism, clowning, balladry, and delirious piano work. It was there that she cooked up what became her biggest selling records, "Hurry on Down" and a re-tooled version of Buddy Johnson's hit, "Fine Brown Frame." Both are prime examples of her self-described "Lutcherous" approach, a witty, risqué brand of music that came to beguile nightclub sophisticates across the country. Her left hand coolly pumped out rhythm patterns as the right frolicked, her heavily rhythmic piano alternated between straight melody and free jazz improvisation, she tossed scat over the breaks and vocalized like mad on the verses.
But she had to yet to record anything. In early 1947 she performed on a live March of Dimes fund-raiser broadcast on the Hollywood radio station KFWB, delivering a rollicksome version of "The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)." Capitol A&R man, Dave Dexter heard the show and recognized a sound with potential, not only to dominate the burgeoning postwar "race market" but also cross over to pop audiences. Within days Lutcher was in the studio. Her first release, "Hurry On Down," a uptown plea of down-home lust ("Haul it down, drag it down, any way you get it down") was considered too hot for broadcast and faced an outright ban at more than a few radio stations. It nonetheless sold nearly a million copies and spent eighteen weeks on Billboard's race chart. Her next two, "Fine Brown Frame" and "Real Gone Guy," sold just as well. Following a successful 1947 stint at Barney Josephson's Café Society in New York, she was a national star, headlining shows coast to coast.
After the Armed Forces Network's "Midnight in Munich" program introduced her records to European airwaves, English disc jockeys began spinning them and Lutcher was hot throughout Britain. Her debut UK tour was frantic, and she was routinely escorted by police through hordes of clamoring fans. It couldn't last; mood and message fell to the wayside with the 1950s rise of the Big Beat and Lutcher's star, like that of most black jazz and r&b originators, gradually descended. Nonetheless, Lutcher had a not inconsiderable track record and continued recording for Epic, Decca, and Liberty, creating such delights as "Muchly Verily," from the terrific Whee, Nellie album (1959 Liberty). But by the mid-1960s, she had virtually quit the business and concentrated instead on service as a board member at the Hollywood musicians union Local 47. A crooked manager had rooked her, and Lutcher was bitter: "Money was made," she said, "but Nellie didn't get it." Playing only the occasional show, she gathered an unwelcome mantle of obscurity.
In 1980, old ally Barney Josephson revived her career when he booked her into his Manhattan club the Cookery, earning strong reviews and that blush of rediscovery booking agents hope to feast upon. She also had an illustrious cult of high-profile fans--including Elton John, Solomon Burke, and Little Jimmy Scott--and received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's prestigious Pioneer Award in 1992. Lutcher continued with sporadic engagements around Los Angeles through the mid-'90s, but routinely turned down lucrative European tour offers. Slowed by times passage, she went into semi-retirement in Los Angeles, and eventually quit performing altogether. Nellie Lutcher died on June 8, 2007 at the age of 94.
