A Requested Memory of Bill Russell
In 2011, I asked my grandmother to write a few words on her friend, the composer and musician, Bill Russell. Here is the original text, first published as a nola.com article, along with a few keepsakes that my grandmother saved from her years working with Preservation Hall.
My memories of Bill Russell are softly lit, with silver and pink-tinged whiteness (him). His clothes are a white shirt and blue-black pants.
I select a memory to tell you. Bill sits relaxed on a tall stool next to Preservation Hall’s record rack. He holds a bank envelope for record sales. I sit on the stool to his left, basket in my lap for entrance fees. He jests. His humor is keen and gentle.
Then he is thoughtful, standing, holding one ear, tilting his head, replying to a questioner, his words precise and true.
My good friend Resa Lambert joins in our banter while she waits to announce the break. This time she tells of long ago, the many drafts I wrote of short notes to the Preservation Hall musicians on tour in Japan in 1963.
Hearing her, I could imagine drafts spilling out a waste basket, out the gates, down the street to the river all the way to St. Louis.
Bill, suddenly my knight, tells Resa my many drafts were the right approach, that people are entirely too careless with words.
Here are the band members' 1963 business cards, Japanese on the front, English on the back (or the reverse).
Lost are those of George Lewis and Joe Watkins. My memory includes writing to Cie Frazier, but I see from a book that he wasn’t on the tour and missing New Orleans.
Sally Fellon Smith – April 7, 2011
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