'Swamp Boogie Queen' Dies

Katie Webster, the blues singer known as "The Swamp Boogie Queen" for her frenetic, two-fisted piano style, has died. She was 63.

Ms. Webster died Sunday of a heart attack at her home in League City, Texas, just southeast of her native Houston, according to her record label.

Born Kathryn Jewel Thorne, Ms. Webster first learned to play gospel and classical music.

Her parents, wary of secular influences, kept the piano locked up so she couldn't play unsupervised. But, thanks to an old Philco radio she smuggled into her bedroom, Ms. Webster was exposed to the earthly, earthy tunes they discouraged.

As a teen, she moved in with more permissive relatives in south Louisiana and, by age 15, became one of the most requested studio musicians in the region. Her music appears on more than 500 singles cut in the 1950s and 1960s.

A young Otis Redding discovered her playing with her band in 1964. She toured with him until his death in a 1967 plane crash that might have killed her, except she couldn't fly because she was pregnant.

Devastated, Ms. Webster essentially stopped performing until the early 1980s, when she took Europe by storm. She also became a favorite in the U.S. blues festival circuit and recorded on the Chicago-based Alligator Records label with the likes of Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt.

A 1993 stroke severely damaged her eyesight and use of her left hand, but she continued to appear at select festivals.

A reviewer critiquing February's "Deluxe Edition," a compilation album featuring past recordings, wrote that Ms. Webster "combined a soulful voice with a rollicking piano style to reign as Queen of the Boogie."