After a delightful Jazz Fest set this year that included both a cappella French ballads and a lecture to the women in the room about dressing immodestly, Creole singer Inez Catalon was informed that her allotted time had run out. She responded with one last gesture: staring straight ahead, she took her ankle-length dress in hand and flipped the hem at the audience. Ignoring the applause, she walked offstage.
“It was her way of getting the last word,” recalls Marce Lacouture, who interviewed and performed with Catalon during her annual Jazz Fest shows. It was also, adds Lacouture, probably Catalon’s unique way of bidding farewell to her audience.
Following her show, the 50-year-old singer, who had recently been in ill health, held her Jazz Fest paycheck and commented that she believed it was going to be her last one.
Inez Catalon died of heart failure on Nov. 22 — Thanksgiving Day. Recalls Lacouture: “It was 12:30 a.m. and I heard a big wind come outside, and I sat up and remarked on it to myself. I found out 10 minutes later that Inez had died.”
Marie Inez Catalon was born on the Vermilion Bayou, near what is now Kaplan, on Sept. 23, 1913. She once described her Creole ancestry to ethnomusicologist Lisa Richardson: “What’s wrong with this picture? Grandma was a Broussard, Grandpa had a German last name-Vabb. I have Catalon-Spanish — so what does that make me? I can’t untangle what they messed up!”
Although Catalon learned her repertoire of French ballads while sitting at the fireplace with her mother, she wasn’t encouraged to sing in public, says Lacouture. “Her family used to tell her she shouldn’t sing, that she had a heavy, coarse voice-it didn’t have the prettiness they thought was good singing. Her mom specifically told her that her tongue was too heavy to sing.”
Despite — or perhaps to spite — these warnings, Catalon went on to enjoy a distinguished career as a singer of ballads, religious songs, children’s songs and country tunes. She performed in 1974 at the first Tribute to Cajun Music festival in Lafayette, and sang at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in Washington D.C., as well as in a concert tour sponsored by the National Council for the Traditional Arts. She was featured on Zodico: Louisiana Creole Folktales (University Press of Mississippi).
In an interview with Richardson, Catalon spelled out her belief that everyone should sing: “Be yourself! Don’t think you’re better if you have money or you can sing. If you have a coarse voice, go with it!!”
