Champion Jack Dupree "Chicken Shack Blues" 1964
Shake Baby Shake
Shim Sham Shimmy
Walking the Blues
A fantastic piano player, Champion Jack Dupree used to keep the audience amused after playing his set with some great stories and jokes. He used to like the people up north – he lived in Halifax Yorkshire in the sixties and had a Ford Anglia estate car with his name on the side. The piano he used eventually turned up at Calderdale College. Before writing humorous blues lyrics and playing the piano he was a boxer.
Sometimes he said it was an accident, other times the Ku Klux Klan, when asked about the death in a fire of his parents. Be that as it may, he grew up in New Orleans’ Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys (as did Louis Armstrong).
In 1940 Chicago A & R man Lester Melrose at OKeh Records recorded him Junker’s Blues (later became Fats Domino‘s The Fat Man).
Champion Jack was in the Navy in World War Two and was also a prisoner of the Japanese. In 1953 he recorded Shim Sham Shimmy, Walking the Blues and on King Records Mail Order Woman, Let the Doorbell Ring, Big Leg Emma’s Me and My Mule
In 1958 he did an LP for Atlantic. 1958’s Blues from the Gutter : Stack-O-Lee, Nasty Boogie.
In 1990 he returned back to his roots, New Orleans. A truly great guy as anyone who saw him would tell you.
Champion Jack Dupree – Wikipedia
Born 23rd July 1909 – New Orleans, Louisiana
Died 21st January 21 1992 – Hanover, Germany