Louisa ‘Blue Lu’ Barker Was More Than a Blues Singer

When I’m not writing about jazz, I’m a kids’ science educator. It’s true—since 2020 I’ve run a small business which delivers workshops and parties to schools and private clients all over the county, aimed at children aged 4-11. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here before. But then, it’s never been relevant before. Anyway, when you work with hundreds of kids each week you hear a lot of weird things, not all of them appropriate when coming from the mouth of an elementary schooler.

Sometimes you hear something truly shocking—something that makes you think, “Where have they heard that?” and “Do they know what it means?” Occasionally you need to have an awkward conversation with a parent or teacher about potentially harmful influences in the child’s life. (To be honest, it’s usually YouTube.) But safeguarding standards weren’t quite so strict a century ago, and Louisa “Blue Lu” Barker was living proof of this.

Born in November of 1913, little Louisa Dupont was performing bawdy blues songs on street corners from a tender age. Interviewed by the vibraphonist Milt Jackson in 1980, she recalled taking part in outdoor concerts along with other young girls in her New Orleans neighborhood. These took place on small stages erected on empty lots—and may well have been catered by Louisa’s father August, who sold bootleg liquor out of a candy store he ran (speaking of harmful influences).

Louisa junior’s singing was inspired by records in her mother Louisa senior’s collection, as well as by the assortment of amateur musicians who would gather at her family home in Treme. These included clarinetist Joseph “Brother Cornbread” Thomas, who would go on to work with Henry “Kid” Rena, Papa Celestin, Sweet Emma Barrett, and others. Talent scouted in the street by some neighborhood girls, young Louisa began appearing at these plein-air gigs, naively trotting out some of the ribald blues numbers she had heard around the house.

These included Clara Smith’s “I Got Everything a Woman Needs,” which she regularly performed up to the age of eleven, she recalled to Hinton. “At that time, I couldn’t see, you know, nothin’ wrong,” Louisa said (on a tape which can be accessed via the Rutgers University website). “I wasn’t sayin’ nothin’ wrong because I didn’t understand.” Singing songs wholly inappropriate for a sweet little girl became something of a trademark for young Louisa—which makes me wonder what sort of adults attended her concerts.

Only as Louisa approached adolescence did her mother see fit to clean up her daughter’s act. At that point she forbade the girl to sing in any more concerts—she was to dance only, or she wouldn’t take part at all. “If anyone asks you to be in a concert,” Louisa was told, “don’t tell them you know how to sing. Because those songs that you’re singing, people think you know what you’re saying.” Louisa was confused. “Well, what’s wrong with them songs Mama?” she asked. “Well, never mind what’s wrong with them,” she was told, “they are not for a little girl to sing.”

So Louisa joined a junior troupe called the Merrymakers, she told Hinton—an outfit which appeared at clubs including the San Jacinto, Lyons, and Pelican. Gigs would often require dancers to sing an opening or closing chorus. During rehearsals, she would deliberately sing out of key to throw her colleagues off the scent. But “the night of the concert, I didn’t make no mistakes,” she explained. “They would all be backstage making the sign of the cross that I wouldn’t make a mistake, and I never made no mistake on the night of the concert. So they knew I could dance, but they didn’t know I could sing.”

Louisa’s carefully hidden talent would remain so for some years afterwards. At just 16 she married the guitarist Danny Barker (then 21) and in 1930 they took off to New York where drummer Paul Barbarin—who was also Danny’s uncle—had offered Danny work in his band. Mr. Barker would graduate into bands run by Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, and eventually Cab Calloway, with Mrs. Barker keeping house for him and countless New Orleans musicians who would bunk at their New York apartment while gigging in the city. “Everybody knew they could come by Lu’s and get something to eat,” Hinton recalled. “You fed a host of them. I really saw that myself.”

At these dinners, Louisa recalled, she would often sing along when Danny played guitar. Already won over by her cooking, musicians were bowled over by Mrs Barker’s voice. “They told him as good as I can sing, why don’t you… let them hear me,” said Louisa. “So they brought me down to Vocalion Records.” The firm had a new Hammond organ they wanted to try out, and Louisa would provide the vocal. The test track was “A Tisket, A Tasket,” recorded with the Erskine Butterfield Trio just two months after Ella Fitzgerald’s version. It’s a playful rendition with a slightly more interesting melody, improved by Louisa’s seductive blues licks. (Louisa recalled to Hinton that it was the only side they cut that day, as Erskine wrestled with the unfamiliar Hammond.)

After that first take, Louisa was told that if she wished to continue in showbiz then she needed a stage name. “What about Lu Blue?” she suggested. The Erskine side brought her to the attention of Decca, who reversed her moniker to make her Blue Lu. Of the 24 sides Louisa recorded for Decca, the very first was her most famous: “Don’t You Feel My Leg”—or at least, that’s what it was supposed to be called. The title was considered too risqué by record execs, and the platters were relabelled “Don’t You Make Me High.” The discs were taken off sale while the change was made, lending it an infamy which made the song even more popular when Louisa sang it in the clubs.

Recorded in 1938, the melody was Louisa’s contribution—a tune she would hum around the house—while Danny provided the infamous lyrics: “Don’t you feel my legs / don’t you feel my legs / ’cause if you feel my legs / you’ll wanna feel my thighs / and if you feel my thigh / you’ll wanna go up high / so don’t you feel my legs.” Louisa’s career went from strength to strength, with contracts at Apollo Records and Capitol Records during the 1940s. And although she is best known for bawdy blues recordings such as “I Feel Like Layin’,” “You Gotta Show it to Me Baby,” “Bow Legged Daddy,” and “Loan Me Your Husband,” she also recorded plenty of jazz.

For example, Louisa plattered “A Little Bird Told Me” in 1948, a year before the more famous Evelyn Knight version. “There Was a Li’l Mouse” is a swinging mid-tempo tune about a diminutive cowboy who goes courting and comes home with a wife—precisely the kind of child-friendly material the young Louisa should have been singing, ironically. She also did a lovely live version of “Honeysuckle Rose” featuring Willie Pajeaud on guitar. But “Now You’re Down in the Alley” is the tune which switched me on to Blue Lu because it’s a smorgasbord of swing dance: its lyrics mention the Lindy hop along with steps including the applejack, camel walk, Susie Q, Shorty George, walk the dog, trucking, shim sham, and more.

Louisa’s sweet, girlish voice was admired by none other than Billie Holiday, according to the liner notes of one Blue Lu collection—some sources even cite her as Holiday’s main vocal inspiration. The Barkers formed a band called The Jazz Hounds on their eventual return to New Orleans, in 1966 when Louisa senior became unwell. This outfit played the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival regularly between 1974 and 1989, when their final appearance was captured on wax (Live at the Jazz Festival, Orleans Records, 1998), just months after Louisa had a tracheotomy. The coquettish Lolita is gone, replaced by a growling grandma—but the songs are still in tune.

Louisa died in 1998 at the age of 84—four years after Danny, who passed away just months after New Orleans City Council declared that 13 January would be Blue Lu and Danny Barker Day (note the ordering of those names). She was sent off with a fitting jazz funeral, grand-marshaled by Crescent City musical ambassador Wanda Rouzan. Lifetime achievement accolades won by Blue Lu include one from the Treme Cultural Enrichment Program, several from colleges and universities, a whole host from various magazines, one from the city of New Orleans and another from the State of Louisiana.

So if you haven’t yet got wise to Blue Lu yet then do, because she has a sizeable catalog of swing to get into as well as the bawdy blues she is most famous for. And if you can’t enjoy a bit of clever innuendo with your music then, as Louis Jordan might say, “Jack, You’re Dead.”