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The Little Queenie Story... (John Sinclair)

Leigh Harris - "Little Queenie" to most – has been singing almost all of her life. She can remember harmonizing with her father at the age of 4, but her family tells her she was singing lullabies back to them in perfect tune at only 18 months.

By the time I was 5 or 6, I knew I wanted to sing," Harris laughs. "When I saw Mary Martin as Peter Pan, I went, Oh, yeah! That’s what I want to do.’ I started singing everywhere I could, and they got me a little ukulele." Her first guitar followed – "after profound begging" at 10, and she started writing songs the next year. One day she went down to Tulane University and sang live on WTUL radio, back when you could only get it on campus. I did some Dylan stuff." She was 11.

Harris grew up in Old Metairie, "very near where Quint Davis lived," and "attended a variety of fine private institutions.’ But she passed on college, instead hooking up with a collection of scruffy young musicians who had congregated Uptown and were about to write a new page in the history of the city’s musical life. Harris fell in with pianist John Magnie and worked a regular duo gig at Tipitina's before she organized her first real band, "Little Queenie & the Percolators".

Little Queenie and The Percolators...

The original Percolators were Magnie, of course, the founder, with John Meunier on bass and Al Pecora on drums," Harris recalls. "The two Johns and I would sing these gorgeous three-part harmonies. By Jazz Fest 1978, we were on fire. The Percolators became one of the top three drawing bands in New Orleans, along with the Neville Brothers and The Radiators."

Before their demise in 1982, "Little Queenie & the Percolators" recorded their classic paean to the Crescent City, "My Darling New Orleans," issued as a 45 rpm single on Ignant Records. "That record is very hard to find now," she acknowledges. "The first time I went to Japan some guy came backstage with a 45 for me to sign and I said, ‘Oh, so that’s where they went!'".

Little Queenie Expands...

After the Percolators disbanded, Harris continued to pursue her muse with a trio called "Little Queenie & the Skin Twins". She broke into the movies in 1988, playing a saloon singer in the John Sayles film "Eight Men Out". "Sayles came into a club in New York City where I was singing one night. He approached me and said. ‘I just think you're so wonderful.' A year later he called me for the movie." Another call came in 1992, for Sayle's "Passion Fish". "He wrote me a part for that," Harris Says, "and we filmed it outside of Lake Charles at the home of the grandmother of my friend Jimmy MacDonnell, who plays with a band in New York City called "Loup Garou". Jimmy ended up doing some of the music for the film."

Mixed Knots...

During the ‘90s, Harris knocked out audiences around town with an aggregation she calls "Mixed Knots", an all-star string ensemble with a shifting cast of characters including Cranston Clements and Jimmy Robinson on acoustic guitars, Mitchell Moss on mandolin, Tom Marron at the violin, and Paul Clement on acoustic bass.

Augmented by the "Cold Bold Soul Chorus", an equally stellar collective including Susan Cowsill and Vicki Peterson of the "Continental Drifters", Holley Bendtsen and Suzy Malone of the "Pfister Sisters", Annie and Jan Clements, and ex-Evangeline singer Kathleen Steiffel. "Little Queenie & Mixed Knots" documented a May 1996 performance at Carrollton Station and released it on CD as "Q Ball" (Deeva Records).

"Q Ball" features songs of nearly every description, from Harris originals to tunes by Robbie Robertson, Randy Newman, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Jimi Hendiix, to extremely personal interpretations of selections from the book of American popular song. "Repertoire – that’s my raison d’etre," sighs Harris. "As much as I love to write, I really, really love to reinterpret things that other people began, and take them somewhere else."

House of Secrets...

She goes even further into the realm of eclectic repertoire with the CD titled "House of Secrets". "House of Secrets" brings us a very intimate Leigh Harris, artfully breathing life into a program of wildly various selections including songs by Doc Pomus, Brian Wilson, Jagger-Richards and Ray Davies. Supported by a pool of exceptionally sympathetic musicians, Harris stamps each performance with her own personality. There are fine originals by John Magnie and Glenn Patscha, two excellent Harris compositions ("Telephone Sleeping in My Bed" and "Crazy Mirrors"), and an exquisite reading of "Paint This Town" in a duet with pianist Joshua Paxton.

"This project kind of started out as a whole other idea of what I wanted the record to be. I was gonna record just my favorite bar tunes, real intimate, and I was going to call it After Hours. Then Magnie played ‘Like a Ghost’ for me on piano, and I wanted to record it. Then everything changed...it just got rounder and rounder and I started seeking other material."

Leigh's Latest...

During the 2003 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Harris produced a live concert under the aegis of the arts administration program at the University of New Orleans, with jazz pianist Michael Wolff, entitled "Unforgettable: Reinterpreting American Song from Armstrong to Zevon" in Warren Zevon's honor, shortly before his death.
She paricipated that summer in New York's Central Park Summerstage Series in a tribute to Janis Joplin, along with a stellar array of female vocalists including Phoebe Snow, Kate Pearson, Judith Owen, Genya Ravan, Susheela Raman, Lene Lovich, and many others from around the world.

Later that year, to benefit the New Orleans musicians' clinic, she recorded three songs for the CD, "Patchwork: a Tribute to James Booker" (STR digital records, STR-1014), one of which, 'Providence Provides', was nominated by Offbeat Magazine as 'Song of the Year'.

Harris is currently at work on her latest CD, "Purple Heart".