Champion Jack Dupree: The Orphan Who Played the World

The Champion Jack Who Played the Blues the Hard Way

William Thomas Dupree was born on July 4, 1910, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents died in a fire when he was an infant, and he was raised at the New Orleans Colored Waifs' Home — the same institution where Louis Armstrong had learned to play trumpet a few years earlier. Young Dupree taught himself barrelhouse piano in the bordellos and barrooms of the city, absorbing the blues, boogie-woogie, and jazz that filled every corner of New Orleans.

He ran away from the orphanage as a teenager and traveled through the South, playing piano wherever someone would let him. He also pursued boxing, earning the nickname "Champion Jack" from his time in the ring. The boxing career was modest. The music career was extraordinary.

Barrelhouse Blues Around the World

Dupree recorded prolifically from the 1940s through the 1980s — barrelhouse blues piano that combined New Orleans rhythms with a rough, soulful vocal style. His songs "Junker's Blues" (which Fats Domino later reworked into "The Fat Man") and "Walking the Blues" became standards. He was a link between the old New Orleans piano tradition and the modern R&B that would emerge from the city in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, Dupree moved to Europe, where blues musicians found more appreciative audiences. He settled in England and then Germany, performing and recording with European jazz and blues musicians until the end of his life. He died in Hannover, Germany, in 1992.

The Orphan Who Played the World

Champion Jack Dupree was born into tragedy, raised in an orphanage, and fought his way — literally, in the boxing ring, and figuratively, on the piano bench — to a career that spanned five decades and three continents. He carried New Orleans piano with him everywhere he went, proving that the city's music is portable, durable, and universal.