Hurry On Down

A husky nightclub handyman shoved the Steinway out to the center of the floor. The lights went down; over a shattering fanfare, a voice roared out the name that in the past month has become the talk of Manhattan's barfly set. Nellie Lutcher, a buxom 5 ft. 9 in a long white gown, swept in.

Back in the dark, drums were softly brushed. Nellie struck a big fat chord. Underneath the piano, her gilded sandal began to slap the floor. And with a pixyish glance up into the smoke-filled spotlight, Nellie was on her way. From behind a shiny gold tooth came a big voice with dust in it--singing Hurry On Down, a husky tune Nellie herself wrote. First, her piano accompanied her with knotty background chords while she sang; on a second chorus, she accompanied the piano (which she plays in a style reminiscent of the musician she most admires, Duke Ellington) with a kind of happy deedle-dee-dee whisper.

Nellie is a showman who spreads fun with darting glances and impish inflections. Says she: "I've got to feel what I'm doing and I'm not happy until my audience feels it too. ... I can sense it, I can tell from their faces."

Manhattan's Cafe Society Downtown isn't the first place Nellie has crowded with admirers. People have been listening to her ever since she was eight, when she played the organ in the Baptist Church in her home town of Lake Charles, La.

She quit high school to play piano and sing in a band in which her father played bass, and Bunk Johnson played cornet. Hollywood has been hearing her in nightclubs for the past five years, but Nellie didn't really begin to catch on until Capitol recorded her He's a Real Gone Guy, Hurry On Down and You Better Watch Yourself, Bub. Her first two records have already sold nearly a million copies. Last week Nellie, now 32, received Broadway's final tribute to a popular singer, Tin Pan Alley's rough equivalent to a Stalin prize. She was signed to appear at the Paramount Theater at $3,000 a week.

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