Benton’s Piano Teacher:
Mrs. Lalah Lovett Ely
Written by Justin D. Lamb
Left: Lalah Ely plays a tune on the piano in the 1970s.
Right: Lalah Ely’s graduation photo from Benton High School, 1912.
(Courtesy of Marshall County Genealogical Society)
For nearly five decades, Mrs. Lalah Lovett Ely taught over five hundred children in the Marshall County region the appreciation of music through the piano. She would often spend many hours in front of a piano passing her talent and love of music onto others.
Born on August 31, 1893 in Benton to John G. Lovett and Laura Frizzell, Lalah was raised at 1302 Maple Street (now Joe Creason Drive). She attended school at Benton and began taking piano lessons at the age of eight. Lalah soon took a great interest in music and often learning as much as she could from her piano teachers, Nell Palmer and Mrs. Jack Fisher.
Lalah graduated from Benton High School on April 26, 1912 and was Benton’s first ever salutatorian. In a 1970s interview with the Tribune-Courier, Lalah recalled her graduation night, “It rained cats and dogs that night and our school body was small enough (only 14 students) that the whole high school had a party for us after the lengthy exercises. And our diplomas were made out of real sheepskin.”
Following graduation, Lalah enrolled at Randolph Macon College in Lynchburg, Virginia where she received further training in music. After only a semester of college, Lalah dropped out and married Joe Ely of Benton on April 3, 1915. The couple had seven children together. Three died as infants and five survived to adulthood.
Lalah’s husband passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 58 in June 1950 and on September 5, 1954, Ely’s daughter, Winifred Ely Craynon, passed away tragically in an automobile accident. Laura Ely took in her two grandchildren as raised them as her own.
Lalah Ely was a longtime member of the Benton Methodist Church which she joined in 1902 at age nine. She often played piano and organ at the church and was active with the children. Lalah was called upon often to play piano at the tent shows that came through Benton each summer in the 1920s. The season often lasted ten days and Lalah would entertain the crowd with her music. Lalah Ely began offering piano lessons to the children of Benton in the 1930s. She charged three dollars a month which included two hours of lessons per week. Soon almost every household in Benton had a child taking piano lessons from Mrs. Ely.
Every year, Lalah’s piano class would put on a concert at the Benton Methodist Church. These recitals were well produced and often very lengthy. Lalah loved to tell the story of how local banker Hatler Morgan had a clever way of cutting his time short at the recitals. “Hatler Morgan had two children at the time and his oldest daughter took piano with me,” Ely recalled. “My annual recitals were rather long because I wanted to give every student the opportunity to play and show what they had learned. Hatler came up with a system to cut his time short at the recitals. After his daughter’s part was finished, he would pinch his youngest baby that was sitting with him in the crowd to make it cry thus giving him an excuse to leave early!”
Lalah Ely was a member of the National Guild of Piano Teachers which made her students eligible to take part in Guild performances held in Paducah. Many times the students were required to memorize as many as ten songs by memory.
After over forty years of teaching piano, Mrs. Ely retired in the early 1970s after breaking her hip. She continued to play the piano for her own enjoyment well on up into her nineties. On April 23, 1986, Mrs. Lalah Lovett Ely passed away at Marshall County Hospital at the age of 92. She was laid to rest beside her husband in the Strow Cemetery.