Champion Jack Dupree

Champion Jack Dupree was born in New Orleans, LA, in 1909. He was orphaned as a child when his parents were killed in a house fire, reportedly set by the Ku Klux Klan. He was raised in the city's Colored Waifs School for Boys--like another New Orleans jazz great, Louis Armstrong--where he learned to play the piano. He earned a living hustling money on the city's streets, and secured jobs playing piano in bars and brothels in the city's French Quarter. In 1930 he left New Orleans for Chicago, and played at house parties and in small clubs, but left the city after a year and moved to Detroit. He decided to became a professional boxer, based out of Indianapolis, IN. He was actually successful in that endeavor, fighting more than 100 bouts and becoming lightweight champion of Indiana. He soon went back to music, however, and in 1940 returned to Chicago, where he recorded for noted producer Lester Melrose. Dupree was drafted into the US Navy in 1942, serving aboard ship in the Pacific as a cook. In 1943 he was captured by Japanese forces and spent the next two years in a POW camp. When he returned to the US after the war he settled in New York City and was soon recording for such labels as Savoy and King. His recording of "Walking the Blues" with Teddy McRae got to #6 on the R&B charts in 1955. Fed up with the prejudice and racism he continually encountered in the US music business--at times he had to supplement his income by working as a cook when he couldn't work as a musician--in 1959 he moved to Europe, first to Paris and then to Zurich, Switzerland. He move around Europe before finally settling in Germany in the mid-'70s. He found a loyal and devoted following in Europe, recording for more than a dozen labels and performing in a series of successful concerts, enabling him to live in the kind of comfort that he never found in the US. In 1990 he returned to the US to play in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, While there he recorded "Back Home in New Orleans" for Bullseye Blues Records. In 1991 he returned to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and recorded another album for Bullseye Blues Records, "Forever and Ever", and later played at the Chicago Blues Festival. He returned to Germany and died in 1992 in Hannover.