The irrepressible Leigh “Little Queenie” Harris was New Orleans to the bone and left an enduring musical legacy when she flew away in 2019 and took her rightful place in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. 

From her early years brewing funky caffeinated jams with Little Queenie and the Percolators, to her later collaborations with a who’s who of local and international stars, Leigh’s style, swagger and swooping vocals lit up the stage with everyone from hometown mentors Allen Toussaint and Dr. John to B.B. King, Sun Ra and Elvis Costello, and introduced the world to the seductive pleasures of “My Darlin’ New Orleans,” her signature hit.

Now, as she so often did in life, Leigh gets the final word, speaking to us from beyond the grave in Waking Up in Dreamland. Like Leigh herself, the posthumous four-track EP, produced and mixed by her husband and longtime bass player Rick Ledbetter, is tiny but mighty. Culled from her last-ever studio sessions in 2014, before the cancer that took her life invaded her body, it captures Leigh at the height of her powers working with some of her closest musical soulmates. It’s also just what the doctor ordered to cure the pandemic blues, brimming with heart and soul that washes over you like a balm.

Hypnotic and opiated, the waking trance of “Dreamland,” written by her old friend Clark Vreeland, is an intimate dialogue between Leigh’s sonorous vocal doubling and the shimmering guitar of Jimmy Robinson, in which they continue to seduce each other even as they drift apart. Then, donning her Gumbo Ya Ya apron, she takes you straight to “Gumbo Heaven,” backed by a full choir of soul sisters and brothers, from Susan Cowsill and Darcy Malone to Andre Bohren and Leigh’s son, Alex MacDonald—a spicy mix of voices bound together by her own rich roux. The same chorus of voices adds depth and texture to “Let the Tears,” a deeply soulful heartbreaker of a lament.

“Ruby,” the closing track, is a lovely old standard recorded by everyone from Ray Charles to Neil Diamond to Vic Damone. But it becomes a real tour de force when Leigh joins forces with the ever-inventive guitarist Phil DeGruy in a mesmerizing version that loops us back into “Dreamland,” where the EP’s magic began. Like a moth to the flame they fly, not blindly but stealthily, as gentle as the final tears trickling down our cheeks after the river, we all cried when the great Leigh “Little Queenie” Harris left us. 

Thank you, Leigh—and Rick—for this wonderful musical coda to a life fully and joyously lived. Long live the Queen!

Waking Up in Dreamland is available to order here.