By Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
A TRUE BLUES VOICE
I
www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com
S AT U R D AY, M A R 1
The Zimmerman
The music of Bob Dylan:
with special guest Robbie
Fulks
f you have ever witnessed Nora Jean
Wallace sing, you have gained a true
blues experience. She draws upon
her life growing up on a Mississippi cotton plantation and pours red clay grit,
juke joint joy and Tupelo honey dipped
passion into every note. Her volcanic
vocals reach out and grab every listener,
connecting blues history with a firsthand narrative that always transforms.
If you've never journeyed to the
Mississippi Delta and heard blues in its
door to catch the adults dancing to live
blues bands. "Every weekend, all the
people on the plantation would have a
big party at the juke joint. My grandmother sold pig ear sandwiches and
ham hocks and hot sauce and people
would dance and gamble. It was a good
time," she said. Nora paid tribute to her
grandmother's dance spot with the rollicking blues tune "Down to Miss Mae's
Juke Joint," on her 2003 CD Going Back to
Mississippi (Severn Records) (as Nora
M O N D AY, M A R 3
Annual Jamblaya Cook-off!
With special guest
Marcia Ball Band
M
T U E S D AY, M A R 4
Fat Tuesday Bash!
Nora Jean Wallace
Hurricanes, Food, Beads!
C.J. Chenier
Red Hot Louisiana Band
& the
plus Roy
Rubenstein's Chicago Hot 6
T H U R S D AY, M A R 6
Catholic Charities St. Patrick's Benefit
F R I D AY, M A R 7
#1 Premier Beatles Show!
Am erican
English
S AT U R D AY, M A R 8
Legacy Guild Spring Fundraiser
Libido Funk Circus
T U E S D AY, M A R 1 1
VoiceBox with
Cathy Richardson
Stories Inspired By Songs Inspired By Stories!
S AT U R D AY, M A R 1 5 - O P E N 1 P M
St. Patrick's Day Festival - All Ages!
Stepdancers plus Traditional Irish Food & Music
M O N D AY, M A R C H 1 7
A"Reel" St. Patrick's Day Festival!
Family Friendly! Irish Food, music and fun - open at 5pm
Switchback
Colleen's Irish Stepdancers
plus
F R I D AY, M A R C H 2 1
Blue eyed soul with Alligator Recording artist
Jess e De e
S AT U R D AY, M A R C H 2 2
Acoustic Show
Robbie Fulks
Coming: 4/12 Jim Post, Heartsfield
18 illinoisentertainer.com march 2014
purest form, then listening to Nora is a
convincing substitute.
A voracious talker with a commanding presence, Nora boasts a personality
as big as her voice. Growing up with 15
brothers and sisters, it paid off to stand
out. She struggled with a severe speech
impediment but she discovered another
way to be heard. "I didn't really start to
talk until I was 11. I stuttered really bad
but I always could sing," she told the
Illinois Entertainer. In fact, it's rare for her
to go 10 minutes without bursting into
song. Nora has actually lost a few nonmusical jobs because she couldn't stop
singing. Singing is clearly her birthright,
even though it took a while for her to
fully claim it.
She grew up 30-miles outside of
Greenwood, Mississippi, on a cotton
plantation with her sharecropping parents. "I'm a country girl. I picked cotton,
I had to feed the hogs, get the chickens in
the coop," she said. But she was also a
daughter of the blues. When he wasn't
picking cotton, her father was a blues
singer, covering Howlin Wolf, John Lee
Hooker and Muddy Waters classics and
her uncle played guitar and harmonica.
Her grandmother ran a popular juke
joint that she and her siblings would
sneak down to, peeking into a hole in the
Jean Bruso). Nora Jean's mother was a
gospel singer w