Chris Owens: The Queen of Bourbon Street

The Queen of Bourbon Street

For more than sixty years, one woman owned Bourbon Street — not literally, though she came close. Chris Owens was the Queen of the Vieux Carré, a Texas-born entertainer who turned a small French Quarter nightclub into a one-woman institution that outlasted every trend, every recession, and every hurricane the city threw at her.

Born Christine Joetta Shaw in Texas in 1932, Owens came to New Orleans and never left. She opened her first nightclub on St. Louis Street with her husband Sol in 1956, and when audiences discovered her performances — part cabaret, part variety show, part sheer force of personality — the club became one of the most popular destinations in the Quarter.

After Sol's death in 1979, Chris took full control, eventually managing thirty apartments and four shops within the building at the corner of St. Louis and Bourbon. Her face was everywhere — on the massive Bourbon Street posters that greeted visitors to the Quarter, in the elaborate costumes she wore during performances that she kept doing well into her eighties.

She hosted an annual Easter Parade through the French Quarter that became one of the city's beloved traditions. She appeared in films, received a statue in the New Orleans Musical Legends Park alongside Fats Domino and Louis Prima, and became proof that Bourbon Street could be more than just a party strip — it could be a stage for a genuine artist who treated every show like opening night.

Chris Owens died of a heart attack on April 5, 2022, at eighty-nine. She'd been performing on Bourbon Street since the Eisenhower administration. She'd survived Hurricane Katrina, the oil spill, COVID, and every other crisis that had tested the Quarter. She was the last of a breed — an old-school entertainer who believed that the show must go on, and who made that belief her life's work for six decades running.