Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

With her siblings and nephews, Ella Brennan carried on. They invented the idea of “Breakfast
at Brennan’s,” a concept that moved New Orleanians to more ambitious dining at any part of the
day. With breakfast came another concept, the “Eye Opener,” or a mixed drink early in the day.
After a family schism, Ella Brennan in 1974 moved on to Commander’s Palace, leaving her
nephews to operate Brennan’s and eventually making Commander’s the premier uptown restaurant
dedicated to the best of food, cocktails, and service. Cousins Ti Adelaide Martin and Lally Brennan
have carried on the family tradition of innovation, introducing the idea of training their bartenders
in the best techniques of the business. Commander’s Palace thus seized an early role in the crafts
cocktail movement of the twenty-first century. 1 Nephew Ralph Brennan operates three famous
restaurants today while Owen’s brother Dickie and his family have their own popular lines of
restaurants and steakhouses.
1 Elizabeth M. Williams, New Orleans: A Food Biography (New York: Altamira Press, 2013), 110-11; Elizabeth M. Williams
& Chris McMillian, Lift Your Spirits: A Celebratory History of Cocktail Culture in New Orleans (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana
State University Press, 2016), 127-9, 146-7.
M AHALIA
J ACKSON
(1911-1972)
Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong joined the “great migration” from New Orleans in the
1920s, leaving New Orleans’ fertile incubators for the unlimited business opportunities of the burgeoning
city of Chicago. She grew up in the uptown Black Pearl neighborhood on Pitt Street, where
she learned to sing with the choir of the Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Mahalia left with her great
contralto voice and her Baptist choir heritage, both of which lifted her to stardom in Chicago. But
both Jackson and Armstrong always remembered their New Orleans roots that played an
important role in their stylistic accomplishments. Both helped to identify New Orleans as the
American musical originator.
Almost immediately after arriving in Chicago in 1927 Mahalia was invited to join the Greater
Salem Baptist Church Choir and then the professional Johnson Gospel Singers. Her career solidified
when she formed a professional relationship with gospel composer Thomas A. Dorsey, who
composed “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” known as her signature song. Remarkably she refused
to switch from gospel to any other musical form. “I sing God’s music because it makes me feel
free.” Jackson added, “It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.”
Mahalia married twice, but neither union was successful. To perform she traveled regularly
beginning in the 1930s. Following World War II she became a national success with the
William Herbert Brewster song “Move On Up a Little Higher.” In the next decade she began
singing in Europe to large enthusiastic crowds.
When the Civil Rights crusade began in the 1950s Mahalia was a major supporter and a close
friend of Dr. Martin Luther King. He and Ralph Abernathy persuaded her to sing at the Montgomery,
Al., bus boycott concert in December 1956. From then on she steadily increased her presence, most
famously at the March on Washington 1963 speech by Dr. King in which he used a phrase, “I have
a dream” suggested by Mahalia. She sang “How I Got Over” and “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned.”
After Mahalia died near the end of January 1972, her remains were brought to New Orleans for
a great funeral at the Convention Center. Mayor Moon Landrieu and Governor John McKeithen
both spoke. The funeral cortege drove uptown past her Mt. Moriah Baptist Church and then to her
grave in Providence Memorial Park in Metairie. At her death Mahalia left a sizeable estate valued
in the millions. New Orleans placed her name on one of the largest public buildings in the city, the
Mahalia Jackson Center of Performing Arts.
Above: Owen Brennan.
COURTESY OF THE COMMANDERS FAMILY
OF RESTAURANTS.
Below: Mahalia Jackson.
JULES CAHN COLLECTION AT THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2000.78.1.1602.
Mahalia Jackson.
JULES CAHN COLLECTION AT THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2000.78.1.1602.
BIOGRAPHIES
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