Junker’s Blues
Champion Jack Dupree (1940). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
So far, this list of ours has been heavy on the “sex” and “rock and roll” but, honestly, a little light on the drugs. Blues singer Champion Jack Dupree helps us correct the record with his 1940 recording, “Junker’s Blues.”
Champion Jack Dupree’s life is marked by his near-constant brushes with both greatness and tragedy.
While we can’t be entirely certain when William Thomas Dupree was born, one version of his biography says that his birthday was July 4th, 1910. Young William was orphaned at the age of 8 by a house fire, and spent the next several years as a resident of the New Orleans Colored Waifs’ Home.
As a teen, he studied under the tutelage of Willie “Drive ‘Em Down” Hall, even referring to local piano legend as his “father.” It was also Hall who wrote the original “Junker’s Blues” some time before his death in 1930.
In his early 20s, the part-Congolese, part-Cherokee barrelhouse piano player departed New Orleans for a life on the rails. Eventually finding his way to Chicago, Dupree crossed paths with hokum blues legend Georgia Tom and rising boogie woogie piano player Pinetop Smith.
In fact, by his own account, Dupree was standing next to Pinetop on March 15th, 1929 when a dancefloor brawl erupted and a stray bullet struck the promising bluesman dead at just 24 years old.
Dupree moved on to Indianapolis, where he befriended blues singer, piano player and bootlegger Leroy Carr. Leroy too met with an early grave, drinking himself into oblivion by the age of 30, and succumbing to severe kidney inflammation in 1935.
For Dupree, it was on to the next stop—Detroit. There, he encountered future heavyweight champion Joe Louis. The champ advised Dupree to take up prizefighting as a side-hustle.
It was thus that Dupree, moonlighting as a boxer, earned the nickname Champion Jack. It’s said that he was only knocked out twice in a career that spanned 107 bouts.
Given his athletic disposition, Dupree was not himself a junkie. Indeed, the original recording of “Junker’s Blues” catalogs the dangers of chemical indulgence, making explicit reference to reefer, cocaine, and heroin.
Following the landmark recording, Dupree’s career was put on hold while he served as a World War II Navy cook. Two years of Dupree’s service were spent in a Japanese prison camp. Upon his release, he returned to performing—as well as a side-gig “cookin’ for rabbis” at New York’s Yeshiva University.
But Dupree’s fortunes were about to improve.
“Junker’s Blues” was not a hit in its time. But it became a pillar of rock and roll, resurfacing as the musical and lyrical basis for Fats Domino’s first charting hit, 1949’s “The Fat Man”.
Then, with Fats backing him on piano, Lloyd Price turned it into a rock and roll standard on his 1952 crossover hit, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.”
Dupree even rewrote the song in 1958, casting drug use in a somewhat more heroic light. This version spotlights the seedier predilections of rock and roll. And its slow-smoking electric guitar solo, cool sax fills, and laid-back piano boogie coincide with rock music’s popular emergence.
It was also about this time in the late 50s that Dupree, weary of America’s racism, relocated to the U.K. His flamboyant stage persona made him an instant draw to young Britons. And contrary to some of the more critical and cantankerous aging bluesmen of the era, Dupree openly encouraged the budding talents of local kids like Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger.
Dupree lived out his years in Europe, actively performing until his passing at 81 years old in 1992.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll