Frances
McKinnie "Memaw" Fernandez, the longtime president of the New Orleans
Jazz Club and a tireless advocate of traditional jazz, died Wednesday,
June 4, 2003 of cancer at East Jefferson General Hospital. She was 79.
Born in Bolivar,
Tenn., Ms. Fernandez developed a love for traditional jazz at an early
age. In the 1940s, she and her husband moved to Edgard, Louisiana. After
her husband's death in the 1960s, she moved to New Orleans and plunged
headlong into the jazz community.
In 1978, she joined
the board of the New Orleans Jazz Club and logged 16 years as its
president. Founded in 1948, the New Orleans Jazz Club, among the oldest
jazz societies in the country, seeks to preserve and promote traditional
jazz.
Though its public
profile has declined in recent decades, Ms. Fernandez kept the
organization active. It still boasted more than 1,000 members worldwide
when it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. To mark the milestone,
Ms. Fernandez helped recruit famed artist George Rodrigue to create a
Blue Dog silk-screen print. She also spearheaded the creation of the
venerable institution's first Web site.
For many years the
Jazz Club has sponsored a jazz jam session on the last Sunday of every
month at the Landmark Hotel in Metairie, in part to give amateur
musicians the opportunity to interact with more experienced players.
Tim Laughlin,
considered one of the city's finest traditional jazz clarinetists, first
attended a Jazz Club jam session 20 years ago at the outset of his
professional career. At one such Landmark session, Ms. Fernandez
introduced him to a promising 16-year-old piano player named Harry
Connick Jr.
"The Jazz Club took
me in and supported me," Laughlin said. "(Ms. Fernandez) was like a
second mom to me."
The Jazz Club's
phone rang at Ms. Fernandez's home. She was an invaluable resource for
both out-of-town promoters looking for New Orleans jazz musicians and
local bandleaders seeking musicians. In the summer of 2001, Ms.
Fernandez recommended Laughlin to a promoter in Paraguay, leading to
what may have been the first-ever tour of that South American country by
a New Orleans jazz band.
"Wherever there was
jazz music, there was Frances," Laughlin said. "She would do anything to
help promote younger musicians, and she truly loved the music."
In 1988, she helped
organize the hundreds of jazz musicians and second-liners who performed
during the opening of the Republican National Convention. She was
involved in the successful effort to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to
issue a commemorative Louis Armstrong stamp. In 1996, Ms. Fernandez was
appointed to a 16-member citizens' commission formed to oversee creation
and operation of the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.
In addition to her
work with the Jazz Club, Ms. Fernandez also volunteered for a variety of
organizations, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Lioness
Club and the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
"The music keeps you
going, it keeps you young," she said in 1998. "Why do you think these
musicians live so long? It's the music they're playing, that so many
people enjoy. It all comes back to the music."
Survivors include
three sons, Earl, Richard and Wayne Fernandez; a daughter, Sharon
Anderson; a sister, Jetty Ahrens; four grandchildren; and two
great-grandchildren.
Sign & view the family guestbook at
www.lakelawnmetairie.com
Frances McKinnie
Fernandez
