Co-produced by The New Orleans Historic Collection and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation | Free & Open to the public.

New Orleans singer-songwriter “Little Queenie” Harris (1954–2019) had a voice that defied categorization. Though she is best known as a blues-rock singer, she played with bands of many genres and helped shape New Orleans music for 40 years. Once called “a short, dynamic Southern woman with a tough, earthy, blues-ish voice that can rise ecstatically to gospel abandon,” Harris was respected as a musician, songwriter, collaborator, and mentor, and her absence is felt in the music scene in New Orleans and beyond. In 2022, Leigh Harris’s husband, Rick Ledbetter, donated her collection to The Historic New Orleans Collection where it is now a cornerstone of its music collections. Press photos, posters, promotional material, stagewear, and other concert ephemera chronicle Harris’s public presence and persona. Instruments, chart books, lyrics, and audio recordings are a record of her musical skill and vast body of work. Notebooks and scrapbooks provide glimpses of Harris’s mind at work. Taken together, the materials show her influence and ensure that it will live on.

Program Schedule:

5:30 pm – Doors

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm - Panel discussion

Moderator: Gwen Thompkins

Panelists: Nina Bozak, Missy Bowen, Debbie Davis

7:00 pm - 7:15 pm -Q&A

7:15 pm- 8:00 pm – Concert

8:00 pm - 9:00 pm – Reception