Like muddy water through a bend, the deep tones of a bass guitar flow heavy downstream. For Jackson native Nellie McInnis, known to her fans as Nellie Mack, the bass pulls a band’s notes together and serves as a foundation for all other instruments.
“It is the bottom of the sound that keeps the music flowing,” said Nellie, who has played bass for nearly five decades. “It’s something that’s felt, not heard.”
Nellie started tinkering with music when she was about 10 after her brother was put in charge of her in the afternoons while their mother worked.
“He’d leave a few dollars on the top of my grandmother’s organ, and he’d teach me a song. It was almost always blues or gospel, and if I played it perfectly by that evening, I’d get the money,” she said. “I always got the money.”
By the time she was in her mid-teens, she could play anything by ear and was ready for more. For years, she’d heard the siren song of her brother’s beloved, and off-limits, bass guitar that was propped near the organ, and she could no longer resist.
“I was forbidden to touch it, barely even look at it,” Nellie said with a laugh. “But one day, he’d left it on. I could see the little red power light, and it was calling to me.”
Knowing how fast she had always been able to pick up music, she picked up the guitar and began strumming.
“There was a full-length mirror in the room, and I caught a glance at myself and thought, ‘I look good with this.’” She had found a new sound and a new love.
Her brother said that if she was going to play it, she had to learn the right way and began teaching her proper technique. Quickly picking up her new instrument, she set her sights on better-paying gigs instead of the couple of dollars her brother would leave. By her early 20s, Nellie was a regular on the Chitlin’ Circuit, the name given to the string of venues throughout the Southeast where black performers were allowed to play. It was one particular gig on that circuit that altered the course of Nellie’s music.
“We were in New Orleans in this pretty plush place,” she said. “Some guy pulls me aside and asks me to come into the back room where I see a table covered with all these papers.”
“The paper had these lines with upside down golf clubs all over them,” Nellie recalled. “It was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on whatever it was, and he picked up one of the papers and asked me to play.”
Nervous and embarrassed, she told him she would get back to him in a week.
“I was hurting on the inside because I was supposed to know what this was, and I didn’t. Nobody had ever told me what sheet music was,” she said.
Nellie went home, determined to learn what the symbols meant.
“I became hungry for education,” she said. “I was so proud.”
She enrolled in classes and eventually received a master’s degree in violoncello from Jackson State University.
“The professor switched me from the double bass to the violoncello because hauling that huge double bass up the stairs was cutting into my class time. He suggested I learn another instrument,” she said.
Nellie Mack gets called many names now, among them “Trailblazer” and “First Lady of Bass.”
“Call me what you want, but I consider myself a female instrumentalist,” Nellie said. “I do what I love, and I do it with conviction. In music, you gotta’ love this stuff to do it well if you’re going to do it for long.
“You have to practice while everyone else is out having fun.”
Fellow musician Cedric Hollis considers her a multi-generational musician whose sound is difficult to put into words because it blends so many styles.
“She has a sound that brings up so many emotions,” he said. “Some songs make me feel excited, some put me in a mood to dance, some I just want to clap my hands.
“It brings so many memories because she knows old school music and knows nowadays music. Everyone can feel something,” Hollis said. “Her music makes you feel good when you leave a performance, and you remember it as opposed to someone just doing a song. You just want to continue to hear her play.”
Nellie’s talent has taken her as far as Belgium and Norway, but her mother’s declining health over the past several years and death last summer have kept her close to home. Nellie also has served as a primary musician for Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church for 10 years.
“You have to be able to give back to the community that gave you so much,” she said. “Anyone trying to do anything bigger than him or herself has to realize a higher power.”
Wanting a group of her own, she formed the Nellie Mack Project in 2005. In the beginning, she had to split nearly the entire fee every time they played because she wanted the best talent, and good talent is expensive. The Project has grown, but she still faces obstacles.
“Some major events are still out of reach because I’m a woman, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what I love,” Nellie said. “If you’re a female playing bass, you better be good to survive, but I don’t have time for other people to come around to the idea of a female bass player. I’m going to be out there doing what I love.”
Hollis said magic happens when Nellie picks up her guitar.
“She has a lot of energy, period, and it turns up 10 notches when she puts the bass in her hands,” he said.
Nellie would agree.
“It’s like something else is happening. The instrument just becomes a part of me,” she said. “If you see me enjoying this thing, you can’t help but enjoy it, too.
“I may wear callouses out on my fingertips, but I’m living my dreams.”
STORY Maggie Ingram
PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis
