Laura Dukes

She was born Laura Ella Smith in North Memphis, where her father had been a drummer in W. C. Handy's band.^[2] He took her as a young child to theaters and taverns, where she began performing and later worked as a singer and dancer. She was often billed as "Little Laura" or "Little Bit", an allusion to her 4'7" height.^[3] She met blues singer Robert McCollum, later known as Robert Nighthawk, in 1933, and began appearing with him as a duo. After initially learning guitar, she later took up the banjo, ukulele and mandolin.^[4]

She first recorded in 1934, playing mandolin on recordings made in Chicago by the Memphis Jug Band, featuring Will Shade, for OKeh Records.^[5] She also made recordings in the early 1950s with the Will Batts band, which were released some twenty years later,^[2] and performed with the Batts band intermittently. Later in the 1950s, she recorded several tracks with Shade and Gus Cannon, and in 1972 — as Little Laura Dukes — she recorded tracks that were first released on the Italian albums, Blues Oggi and Tennessee Blues Vol.1.^[5]

From the late 1950s, she mainly performed in Dixieland groups at parties and festivals, becoming a favorite with white audiences in Memphis.^[3] In 1976 she appeared in a BBC television series, The Devil's Music,^[6] and continued to perform in clubs in Memphis in the 1980s.^[2]

She died in 1992 at the age of 85.