It isn’t much of a surprise to learn that Mozelle Andrulot was a musical child. “My mother said that I didn’t talk at first — I sang everything,” she says. “Even when I was nursing, I’d be humming. She always knew that I was going to be a singer.”
Andrulot’s ties to the Outer Cape run deep. She says that her father had been invited to Provincetown to play conga drums at a party and first saw her mother when he was walking past Provincetown Town Hall. “My mother was stunning,” says Andrulot. “He was like, ‘Who’s that?’ ” Her parents moved to Key West — where Andrulot was born — and performed as street musicians. “I always joke that I held the hat,” says Andrulot. “My mother’s like, ‘No, you didn’t. And that’s not funny.’ ”
As a young girl, she bought a record of Billie Holiday’s greatest hits. The songs were sad, says Andrulot. “But they didn’t make me feel sad. They made me feel deeply. I was nine years old, singing, ‘My Man’s Gone Now.’ ” Holiday’s songs were in her range, too — Andrulot’s voice, warm and smooth, is relatively low. “I didn’t know it then,” she says, “but I was building my repertoire for now.”
On Saturday, Aug. 17, Andrulot will perform some of that repertoire in a concert at Wellfleet Preservation Hall accompanied by the Mike Flanagan Trio. “It’ll be a mix of jazz ballads, some blues, some Sinatra” — whatever the band likes, she says. “I trust Mike so much that he calls the songs. He knows what I want to do.”
Trust is essential when playing music with others, says Andrulot. “I need to feel safe to venture out, to riff. I need to know that if I do something I don’t normally do, they’ll catch me in the melody when I return.” That trust also leads to the moments of person-to-person musical reciprocity she so loves: the feeling that performer and audience are sharing an ephemeral experience.
Andrulot’s parents split up not long after their move to Key West. Her mother moved back to the Cape and settled at the Penny House Inn in Eastham (now the Rugosa). Andrulot attended Eastham Elementary.
“I can remember getting on the bus and arriving at that school, and I was the only Black person in the whole entire school,” says Andrulot. Things are different now, she says, for her five children, who range in age from 10 to 16 and include a set of twins.
Throughout school, Andrulot sang in choruses, performed in musicals, and sought out talent shows. “Cut to high school,” says Andrulot. “I sang the National Anthem for all of the games.” She grew to love it, she says, and the powerful emotions it evokes. “I sing it in its purest form. I try not to jazz it up too much.”
Instead of pursuing a degree in music performance, Andrulot earned a liberal arts degree from Lesley University in Cambridge. (“I know a little about a lot of things,” she says.) After college, she moved to London, where she recorded a demo album and, she says, “dipped my foot into the possibility of music being a career.” When she moved back stateside to New York City, she found a very different creative scene than the one she had encountered in London. “It was creepy,” she says. “Like, ‘Come with me and I’ll make you famous’-type vibes. I was like, ‘You haven’t even heard me sing yet, so I’m not going anywhere with you!’ ”
Her joy in music was never dependent on anyone else, she says. “My goal was never fame or recognition. It was a way to express myself,” she says. “I carry this instrument around with me at all times. No one can take that away from me.”
Andrulot returned to the Outer Cape and built a home in Wellfleet with her husband, who she’d known in high school. They had five children in six years. “When I say that, my eyes start twitching,” says Andrulot. “I can’t even believe it’s true.” Eventually, she says, “I realized I was doing everything by myself.” She divorced her partner, got a job bartending at Blackfish in Truro, then ran the Inn at Duck Creeke in Wellfleet for five years.
On her own for the first time in 11 years, she says, “I had to reinvent myself.” She moved to Orleans and began working remotely in a corporate job — executive assistant to a senior vice president at PepsiCo. It was time to reconnect with her performing identity — something she says she had suppressed for too long.
Andrulot met Provincetown-based Flanagan during the pandemic. While most of the performances they planned would be canceled because of Covid restrictions, they managed to maintain a recurring gig performing for people waiting in line at PB Boulangerie.
“From then on, he’s been who I call if I need a piano player,” says Andrulot. Likewise, Flanagan, who often performs at the Post Office Café and Tin Pan Alley in Provincetiwn, calls Andrulot if he needs a singer. Through Flanagan, Andrulot has built a network of musicians with whom she regularly collaborates, including Zoë Lewis, Sarah Swain, and Fred Boyle.
Andrulot’s music career came full circle last summer when she sang with the Cape Cod Symphony at the outdoor amphitheater in Eastham — a place where she used to stand as a child, pretending to perform. Her performance included the song “At Last,” made famous by Etta James.
It was an “out of body experience,” she says: “It took me back to when I was a little girl in my room, listening to the song for the first time.”
Summertime Jazz
The event: Mozelle Andrulot in concert with the Mike Flanagan Trio
The time: Saturday, Aug. 17, 6 p.m.
The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
The cost: $30 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Aug. 15, incorrectly credited the photographs of Mozelle Andrulot and Mike Flanagan. They are by Joe Navas.
