Trudy Lynn-Interview

Trudy Lynn – Houston Blues & Soul Lady

by Matteo Bossi

There are artists whose paths is quite linear and other whose journey is different and maybe they have to wait a little longer to get a real chance. That’s probably the case of Lee Audrey Nels better known as Trudy Lynn, born and raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward who basically spent all her adult life singing, although her first real album on her own name came out only in 1989 when she signed for John Abbey’s Ichiban label. We meet for the interview in the lobby of her hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she’s scheduled to be a part in the Nola Blue Revue alongside label mates Benny Turner and Lil’ Jimmy Reed, this past November. And sitting right beside her is the rising talent Young ‘Rell Davenport, who will play guitar with the band the following night. Lynn doesn’t care hiding her age, “I’m 77 and still kicking!” she says with her peculiar laugh at some point, during our conversation. “I was born in Houston, Texas, I graduated in 1965 I’ve been singing ever since then…I remember my father would talk about Bobby Bland or Johnny Guitar Watson, I would see Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton walking down the streets…. She was recording for Don Robey of Duke/Peacock at the time.  Lightnin’ Hopkins was a relative he was born near Crockett, Texas. We were a big family, there were  six of us, three girls and three boys…we used to have talent shows on our front porch and I  did it all, I sang doo-wop, soul, gospel, rhythm and blues but I like blues most of all. Then I was raising my kids by myself… but I made it, here I am. I had my first kid in ’67, I had three, but my youngest son is deceased. I never stopped singing.”

Music has always been there in her household and being a teenager in the late fifties/early sixties in a place like Houston “I can go back to my dad, he loved Nat King Cole, he had 78s and 45s and he did a little tap dance at home…my mother was a hairdresser and her salon in the Fifth Ward was close to the area where the black entertainers could stay. Because they could not stay everywhere. And my junior high school was right across from the club Matinée. Going to school you could do a short cut and go to a club…My mom said you go straight to school and I always said yes mom! I would just look to see what I can see. And back in the day I saw James Brown, I met Joe Hinton, Little Junior Parker or Bobby Bland…And on the side there was a restaurant where my parents would go. Everything was right there.”

You started to sing with different musicians in those days, like I.J. Gosey or Clarence Green.

Oh yes, Clarence Green was the one who really molded me when I first started singing…back then it was Clarence Green and Calvin Owens. And there was another musician, Leo Baxter, I worked with him too when I started my career we would go play to the army bases. It was good for me and Clarence was tough on the looks and everything…but as I look back I appreciate it, as I got older. But I was young and he really molded me, he would say don’t do this, don’t to that for stage presence…I remember one time I was in club in Houston and I was just talking and doing my powder on my face and he came over and said “don’t ever to that no more, you go to the women room for that”…We worked in Houston and we traveled a little bit. We stayed a top band because what was played on the radio we would play it at our shows. That’s how we kept people coming.  I remember one year we went to this theater, the place was big and my name was on the billboard but the people thought it was Loretta Lynn…everyone that came that got a ticket, they  told them this is not Loretta, this is not country music, but they enjoyed, they really did.

Trudy Lynn 1998 photo Philippe Pretet

And there was also Barbara Lynn who had some hits back then.

Oh I knew Barbara well, she used to live in Beaumont and my grandmother lived in Beaumont. I knew her, she’s still doing good, she’s not performing as much as she used to but she goes out and do something, she’s alright.

You worked with Albert Collins in the Sixties?

Oh yes when I first started, I was about sixteen, still in high school, and it was Easter Sunday, my mother carried me and my cousins to a Sunday matinee, there used to be Sunday matinee. She knew him, she was a beautician and she did a lot of artists hair…I met him and he asked me could I sing? Yes. And I did two songs, “A Change Is Gonna Come” and “Money” and that was it. This is what I got to do, because I love it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Archie Bell and The Drells, but I was one of the first Drells, we went to high school together. He transferred from another high school to the one I was in, we were graduating and he took the group. Then he met Skipper Lee Frazier, a DJ in Houston the one that pushed the group. It was me, Frances Johnson, Charles Robinson, who went on to become a movie star…We all went to school together singing doo-wop. Archie Bell is sick now they put him in a home now, he was still working then I think he had a stroke…

You didn’t do any recording until a single, “Long Live The Blues/What A Waste”, in 1973?

That’s right! That was on Sinett. The slow side was a song called “What A Waste” and it was the shortest song in the world! Back in those days you had a three minutes song to be played on the radio. Then my next records were with Ichiban.

 Didn’t you record some stuff for Huey Meaux, the crazy cajun, it came out in 1978 on an Lp titled Big City Nights.

Oh yeah! He was a crazy cajun but he was alright…I was in the studio and I did a song by the Bee Gees, no the Monkees, “I’m A Believer”…we were in the studio and Freddy Fender came and he knocked us all out of the studio. Door was locked. He was something else…he cut his first album with Huey Meaux in the Seventies, I forgot when that was.

 Then in the Eighties you signed with Ichiban, how did that happen?

It was Gary B.B. Coleman. He was looking for a band, he came through Houston and he took my band with him…they told him about me. I talked to him on the phone and he asked me if I had a cassette with my music. I did. He said “you put  that cassette in a shoebox go to the bus station not to the post office and put the package on the bus”.  He was in Paris, Texas. I sent them and about two days later, it was seven in the morning he was knocking on my door. I didn’t know who he was! “Come on in”,  I said. I fix him breakfast and he was there from about seven in the morning until eight at night trying to get me with Ichiban. I had never met him before I just talked one time on the phone with him and I had never heard of Ichiban. What does Ichiban mean? I said. Then I found out it means: number one. It started from there. John Abbey got me overseas as well. I think the first festival European festival I did was in Italy.

Trudy Lynn photo Gianfranco Skala

“Trudy Sings The Blues” was the first album you did on Ichiban, in 1989.

Yes and Gary B.B. Coleman played on that session…I wrote a couple of songs and BB gave me some, he died young, he was booked on a lot of shows, he was very afraid of flying, he never flew…but when he had a heart attack they put him in a helicopter.  Ichiban really kicked the door open for me…I started to come overseas a lot. Then when the record company folded a lot of the artists went in different directions. Abbey had signed a lot of artists, then he got divorced and that was it…But he’s still in Atlanta, Georgia, two years ago I went there to do something and I went to his house to see him, he had married again, he had first married a chick from Japan…he still works with that female group, the Three Degrees, he stills books them.

After Ichiban you did records with other companies, including Connor Ray Music.

Yes I did a couple for other people and then I did about three CDs with Steve Krase. I knew him from the musicians in Houston, I was doing a show at Rockefeller’s and that’s when I met Steve,  they had a big football game…I came on the stage with a broom, everybody looked at me and I said I’m gonna sweep them out of here!  We started from there. He came by the house one day and we were talking and  he said what are you going to do? And I said, I want to do an album of old traditional female singers…I had been listening to a lot of them, like Memphis Minnie, I love her, even if I just can’t play no guitar! When I sing it it’s gonna be me. If I do one that everybody’s doing I’m gonna come out with Trudy’s version. The first record I did with Steve I came to the studio we did ten songs in one session, I like to play off the feel. They said “we don’t have the music”, but “you don’t need no music” I said. I just counted and said “just give me some blues” and  they just fell right on in. The musicians were not used to that. I just went back to to the background vocals myself, I wanted them perfect because of the way I was phrasing it, I did with a different voice.

You recorded a live album in France with Carl Weathersby, who passed away a few months ago.

Yes, we did a live recording in Paris…Carl I didn’t know he was that sick he was in Austin, Texas I enjoyed working with him. I got the chance to see him a couple of years ago doing a thing there. Last year here in Europe I also did meet again Jean-Marie, from that record label,  I had not seen him in years, he said he had moved from Paris to another city in France…

 The last record you put, “Golden Girl”, is for Sallie Bengtson label, Nola Blue.

I wrote some songs for this one and she’s got about six other songs in the can that we did on that session that we didn’t use. I’m gonna go in and do more. And Koko Taylor’s daughter, Cookie, wants me to do a dedication to her mother and I’m gonna do that. How did I meet Sallie? Oh Steve he’s the one who introduced me to Sallie, you know he’s got a regular job, he’s a geologist and he travels a lot. He knew Sallie and then we met a festival she put together in Grapeland, Texas. When I came off the stage she said she wanted to work with me…so here we are. We did a couple of gigs and the album.

Trudy Lynn Lucerna 2014 photo Philippe Pretet

 Did you know your label mate Benny Turner before?

No, I knew Freddie but not Benny. I think we first met over here in Europe at the  Porretta Festival, Italy when he was with Marva Wright, the girl from New Orleans…she passed away, he was her band leader. That’s when I met him. He told me he was Freddie King’s baby brother. I did see Freddie once when I was younger, when he had a hit back in the day with “Hideaway”. And I got to see Dinah Washington, I was just amazed watching her because my mom and dad they really loved Dinah Washington. There was a club in Houston called The Cinder Club by a guy Ray Barnett he had eight clubs all over Houston…he had everybody coming and when it was show time the stage would come out from the floor, four feet in the air. So everybody could see the performers. But when the disco came through it changed a lot of things. They started putting mirrors, lights on the ceiling and stuff…before if you didn’t have two or three band nobody would be there. Then it was just DJs and that was it.  I’ve been through it all.

How do you work on your songwriting?

Oh when I started out in a girl choir, I used to write a lot of poetry, I loved that…I try to write everyday and I try to choose the most simple thing that everybody says. I was at a place one time and I heard a gentleman and some other dude standing at the bar, drinking,  they got into an argument and he he said I don’t need nothing from you but you ought to just leave me alone…I thought that’s a song, I wrote that down on a piace of paper! I have notes and I try to put a story together, to me it’s all about listening to people, about what’s going on…you want to stay on it.

Do you think young artists see you as a role model?

When young artists come to me and talk to me I take it as a compliment…I’m just grateful, I just say to  them “go ahead, you’re gonna be yourself regardless”. I think that some of them are really going to be good musicians. When you’ve been around a long time you can tell who’s gonna make it and who’s not gonna make it.  You know, blues it is simple but if you don’t have the feel it ain’t going to work, and that makes a big difference. You got to feel the song and you got to be careful about the lyrics you sing…

Do you still live in Houston?

I just recently, three months ago, moved to Cleveland, Texas, it’s in the outskirts of Houston, in the country. I love it. I’ve been in the city all my life but I’m enjoying the country. I fish, well I do more directing…I can’t fish but I can cook! And I listen to the blues…I’m grateful that you can go and find that old blues on the internet, I get on youtube and  listen to a lot of the older artists, that’s really my thing, I love their voices and the stories they were singing about.