Louisa "Blue Lu" Barker (née Louise Dupont) (November 13, 1913
– May 7, 1998)
was an American
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
singer. Her better-known recordings include "Don't You Feel My Leg" (1938), which she wrote with her husband, "
Georgia Grind
"Georgia Grind" is a jazz and dirty blues tune, written by Spencer Williams and copyrighted by him in 1926. The lyrics were added by Bud Allen. A recording was released by Louis Armstrong with his Hot Five by Okeh Records on a 78 rpm, mono 10" ...
" and "Look What Baby's Got for You."
She was born in
, Louisiana,
and often sang and performed with her husband, guitarist
Danny Barker
Daniel Moses Barker (January 13, 1909 – March 13, 1994) was an American jazz musician, vocalist, and author from New Orleans. He was a rhythm guitarist for Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder and Benny Carter during the 1930s.
One of Barker's earl ...
, a regular of the New Orleans music scene.
Barker's recording of "
A Little Bird Told Me" was released by
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
as catalogue number 15308 in 1948. It first reached the ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
''
chart
A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...
on December 18, 1948, and lasted 14 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 4.
Barker was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997, one year before she died in New Orleans, at the age of 84.
See also
*
List of classic female blues singers
The following is a list of classic female blues singers.
A
* Mozelle Alderson
* Ora Alexander
B
* Mildred Bailey
* Blue Lu Barker
* Gladys Bentley
* Esther Bigeou
* Lucille Bogan
* Ada Brown
* Bessie Brown
* Eliza Brown
* Kitty Brown
...
*
List of people from New Orleans, Louisiana
This is a list of notable individuals who are or were natives, or notable as residents of, or in association with the American city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Academia
*Will W. Alexander, first president of Dillard University and head of the C ...
References
Classic female blues singers
Jazz musicians from New Orleans
American jazz singers
American women jazz singers
American blues singers
1913 births
1998 deaths
20th-century American singers
Singers from Louisiana
20th-century American women singers
Decca Records artists
Capitol Records artists
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