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Mamie Porter performs during the Baton Rouge Blues Festival in 2022. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Baton Rouge’s blues community is mourning the death of singer Mamie Porter . A songwriter and vocalist who performed for 30 years with her husband, Smokehouse Porter, she died Saturday at the couple’s home.
She was 72. Smokehouse Porter noted his wife’s grace, poise and knack for connecting with audiences and musicians alike. Blues couple SmokeHouse and Miss Mamie Porter close out the Baton Rouge Blues Festival in 2022.
“She had a beautiful voice and she was a great songwriter,” he said Sunday. “Mamie was shy offstage, but once she hit the stage, she was a different person.” Local musicians swiftly expressed their grief over Mamie Porter’s death in social media posts.
“Ever since I can remember Smokehouse and Miss Mamie Porter have been singing the gutbucket blues,” Jonathon “Boogie” Long wrote. “And they were always so kind, gracious and supportive of, not only myself, but the entire Baton Rouge Blues community. RIP Miss Mamie, you will be missed by your blues family.
” “I am so sad to inform you all of the passing of Mamie Porter today,” Henry Turner Jr. posted late Saturday. “We are all sending condolences and prayers to the family.
” Mamie Porter and her husband, Smokehouse Porter, performed locally and regionally for 30 years. In 2018, the Porters received the Slim Harpo Music Awards’ pioneer award in recognition of 25 years of singing blues together. Also speaking Sunday, Johnny Palazzotto, the local music producer and publisher who presents the Harpo Awards, said Mamie Porter possessed a special quality that made her unique among other singers.
“But she was definitely a lady of the blues,” Palazzotto added. Appearing locally and regionally, the Porters and their Gutbucket Blues Band played a deep-blues repertoire featuring downhome original songs and standards from classic Louisiana, Chicago and Delta blues acts. They began their musical partnership in 1993 and married in 1999.
“It’s like we know each other’s moves,” Mamie Porter once said. “And I’m totally relaxed with him. I’m not saying that I can’t perform with anybody else, but I don’t want to be with anybody else.
I’m at home with him. And he is the blues.” In 2018, the Porters received the Slim Harpo Music Awards’ pioneer award in recognition of 25 years of singing blues together.
“Our music is a combination of swamp blues and Mississippi Delta blues,” Smokehouse Porter told The Advocate in 2018. “I’m the king of the gutbucket blues and she’s the queen.” Like her husband, Mamie Porter loved music from childhood.
She harmonized at home with her sisters and sang in a children’s choir at church. Performing with the Scotlandville Magnet High School choir helped her appreciate many styles of music. The Porters dated briefly decades before their marriage and music-making.
After her move to Chicago in 1972, Mamie Porter performed rhythm-and-blues and some jazz. But neither of those genres meant as much to her as her hometown’s homegrown blues. “I love jazz, but I’m a blues woman,” she said.
Mamie and Smokehouse Porter are part of the long line of local blues musicians that date to 1950s and ’60s recording artists Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim and Lazy Lester. Even though Mamie Porter brought a female perspective to the music, she modeled herself after bluesmen. “I was influenced by male blues artists, so to be amongst the guys out there doing the blues is right down my alley,” she had said.
The Porters released their all-original album debut, “King & Queen of the Gutbucket Blues,” in 2003. A holiday single, “Rudolf’s Got the Blues,” followed in 2011. Their second album, “My Ears Are Ringing,” arrived in 2023.
It had been delayed by the Baton Rouge flood of 2016 and the deaths of both of their parents. “Our parents were like a heartbeat for us,” Smokehouse Porter said. “We stayed off the scene for some years.
” Filmmaker Evan Kidd’s short documentary, “We Lived the Blues,” chronicles the Porters' music career and their struggle to rebuild after the flood. “We’ve been working hard trying to reach people,” Mamie Porter told The Advocate in 2018. “That’s what it’s all about — touching hearts and making the day for somebody who needs that boost.
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