Whenever jazz flutist and soprano saxophonist Betsy Braud sat in with George French at the Carousel Bar or Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar in New Orleans, the since retired singing bassist introduced her in dramatic style.
Upon seeing Braud enter the venue, French grabbed his chest and shouted: “I need a jazz nurse! I need a jazz nurse now!”
Braud is the jazz nurse, a medical professional who moonlighted at music venues in Baton Rouge and New Orleans throughout a 40-year nursing career. A musician since her childhood in Thibodaux, she studied at Southern University in Baton Rouge with that cherished mentor to generations of jazz musicians, the late Alvin Batiste. Braud’s non-classroom mentors include Thaddeus Richard, the sax, flute and clarinet player from Thibodaux who performed with Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band, Wings.
left to right Betsy Braud, Michael Foster, John Smart and Chris Lee,
Braud’s connection to Batiste makes her a natural for the Alvin Batiste Jazz Society Listening Room concert series. She’s performing Wednesday, May 22, at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center, interpreting standards and playing her original compositions with her fellow members of the Southern University Jazz Institute Hall of Fame — keyboardist John Smart, bassist Michael Foster and drummer Chris Lee. Following the quartet’s hourlong performance, musicians are invited to join the group for a post-concert jam.
Braud was known as the jazz nurse even before the 31 years she worked at Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge. She earned the nickname in the mid-1980s while traveling a home health care circuit along Bayou Lafourche.
“I drove into the back fields, doing whatever medical care my patients needed,” Braud said last week. “I brought my flute or my soprano sax with me and, before I left, I played a hymn. My patients’ families were like, ‘Oh, mama. Your little jazz nurse is here.’ ”
Though she loved her home health care patients, Braud didn’t like the traveling. After three months of visiting friends in Brazil and exploring the country and its music, she returned to Louisiana and worked at Thibodaux General Hospital.
Prior to the nursing career Braud retired from in 2021, she moved to Baton Rouge to pursue a music therapy degree at LSU. At that time, the music therapy program required two years at LSU and a succeeding two years at Loyola University in New Orleans. But during her studies at Loyola, Braud grew more interested in music performance. Then, a short walk one night from her apartment to the Maple Leaf Bar to hear Walter “Wolfman” Washington changed Braud’s musical direction.
“A gentleman at the bar said: ‘If you’re digging this music, you should come with me. We’re going to go hear the most incredible music you’re ever heard,’ ” Braud remembered. “So I road with him to Lu & Charlie’s Jazz Club on Rampart Street. Alvin Batiste and his Jazztronauts were playing in the back part of the bar. Mr. Bat always performed with his students as his rhythm section. It was Herman Jackson, drums; Julius Farmer, bass; and Henry Butler, piano. Once Mr. Bat started playing, and I heard the magic coming from his clarinet, I had to study with him.”
Braud moved back to Baton Rouge and earned a degree in classical flute performance from LSU while simultaneously taking improvisation and jazz band classes with Batiste at Southern University. She performed multiple nights a week in Louisiana’s capital city until her return to Thibodaux to care for her dying grandmother. Braud subsequently enrolled in nursing school, following her grandmother into the profession.
Since her retirement from nursing, Braud has more time for music. She’s even toured internationally, joining Patrice Fisher, the New Orleans-based Latin-jazz harpist, for trips to Brazil, Cuba, Martinique and Wales.
Throughout her musical life, Braud hasn’t forgotten Batiste’s lessons, especially the dual importance of discipline in the practice room and freedom on the stage.
“He taught us to practice, to learn the scales, do all the hard work,” she said. “But when you perform, you leave your ego at home, and let the instrument play itself. That’s when you connect to the universe.”
Betsy Braud and Company
6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 22
Cary Saurage Community Arts Center, 233 St. Ferdinand St.
$10, adults; $5, students