Hot! Hot!! Hot!!!
Bourbon Street Legend Chris Owens Continues to Dazzle, Delight, and Deliver

By Dean M. Shapiro

    She may not have an Oscar or an Emmy or some other mini-statue to show for her long showbiz career, but Chris Owens has something even better: a life-sized statue along one of the world’s busiest streets.
    “Miss Owens,” as she is known and referred to by many—including some of her closest friends and associates—didn’t come lightly upon the honor of having a statue dedicated to her in the New Orleans Legends Park on Bourbon Street (one of only five so far). As the old TV commercial goes, she did it the hard way: she EARNED it.
    She earned it by becoming, over the course of five decades, the undisputed “Queen of Bourbon Street.” A singer, exotic dancer, entertainer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and New Orleans-based celebrity icon, Owens has been drawing crowds for three or four generations. Her namesake nightclub at the corner of Bourbon and St. Louis streets has been a French Quarter hot spot since the early 1960s.
    Visually stunning and sensually alluring, she performs her high-energy stage act in tastefully gaudy, skimpy outfits that reveal a figure one reviewer described as something “that can only described using one’s hands.” As for the performances themselves, Owens could write the textbook on “interactive entertainment.” During her shows, which she performs 3-4 times a week at her club (usually on weekends), she doesn’t just stand up there and sing, and her audience doesn’t just sit there and clap for each number. Everyone – from herself and her backup band and backup singers/dancers to the audience itself – is involved. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
    Male members of the audience are chosen at random to come up and join her onstage, whether it’s for a mock cowboy skit or a tastefully teasing rendition of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” or some other equally participatory number from her vast repertoire. Ladies are invited up on stage, too, to strut their stuff. Members of the band and backup singers are given ample opportunities to solo and lead the audience through the house, into the street and across the stage for a good old-fashioned New Orleans-style second line. It is by far the most fun you can hope to have for a night out on Bourbon Street – and the best part is that it’s FREE! (except for the drinks, of course). When the show is over, you can’t help but walk out of the club feeling at least a little (or a lot) better about yourself and about life in general.
    To perform several nights a week– dancing in high heels and moving about in them as gracefully as she does—requires a high level of energy and discipline. Owens stays in shape with a rigorous regimen of exercise, eating the right foods and just living right in general. “Whatever she’s doing she must be doing it right,” is the general consensus that has been vocalized on more than one occasion.

A Lifetime of Accomplishments

    In a recent interview, Owens spoke modestly about an eventful lifetime of accomplishments, honors, and milestones, not the least of which includes rubbing elbows with some of the biggest name celebrities of recent times. Much of her story is already well known; how she came to New Orleans at 19, met and married millionaire auto dealer Sol Owens, and danced and entertained in the lively nightclubs of pre-Castro Havana, Cuba before opening and starring in her own club here. How she developed into the persona she has become is a story best told in her own words.
    After dancing in Havana, “Walter Winchell saw me at El Morocco in New York and he wrote me up in his column and I had offers to go to Hollywood. But my husband had just bought the club at 809 St. Louis [Street] and we opted to stay in New Orleans. Then the Saturday Night Post came by and did a two-page spread in ‘Faces of America’ and it just took off from there. So then I took singing lessons and started doing recordings, and then my husband bought this building at Bourbon and St. Louis just to put my club at the corner. We then sold the house we had on Esplanade [Avenue] and put everything into my townhouse over here. And, between the shops and apartments we rent here and my career, it really keeps me busy. So I’ve been here ever since.”
    And “ever since,” probably hundreds of thousands of people have seen her perform at her club, many of whom have seen her multiple times. Even on nights when she isn’t performing, the club still rocks six nights a week, especially during “Salsa Nights,” which begin immediately after she leaves the stage.
    The years she spent in Cuba and traveling throughout Latin America have infused her with a lifelong love for Latin music, rhythms, and instruments, all of which comes out during her acts. Her bands always feature conga drums and she skillfully shakes the maracas in perfect sync to the exotic dances she performs in the Latin style.

Involving the Audience

    The audience participation aspect of her shows was something that simply came naturally to her, and over the years, she fine-tuned it into an art form. “The audience just loves that part of the show. They love seeing their friends get up and perform. It was something I learned in Havana. They would do that on some of the big shows there. It was something that I just picked up doing and it became a big part of my show.”
    The idea for getting a man up on stage with her while she sings “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” came from a show she saw in Paris and, once she started implementing it here it became one of her signature numbers. She especially enjoys performing it for older men who come to the club on or around their birthdays and they and their families love it.
    When the musical Evita debuted in London in the late 1970s, Owens became the first performer in New Orleans and possibly even in the U.S. to sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” A year before it hit Broadway, Owens heard a rock group doing the song in Singapore. “I thought it was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. Just after I got back (to New Orleans) I was telling a friend about it and he told me, ‘I just got back from London and I bought the soundtrack.’” She and her band at the time quickly learned the song and it soon became her most frequently requested number. Although she no longer includes it in her act, she has fond memories of that time.

Custom Costumes

    Many of her other travels have also resulted in things she picked up along the way being incorporated into her stage shows, including her costumes.
    “They were some ideas I picked up from the Folies Bergère and the Lido in Paris. And I have the artistic ability to design, so I design all my costumes. I buy all the fabric, all the beads myself.” Professing great admiration for Cher when she was dancing and singing in her Las Vegas shows, and Cher’s designer, Bob Mackey, “which came straight from Paris,” Owens patterned many of her outfits along those lines. Revealing enough to tantalize but not so outrageous as to offend.

A Generous Spirit

    Over the years, Owens has traveled widely, performing at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, the Fantasy in Acapulco, and on cruises and in other exotic locales, but New Orleans remains her Ground Zero. And she has definitely been generous about sharing her venue with others. “You know, you always have to have a home base and when Al Hirt closed his club across the street, he didn’t have a home base anymore. So he came to see me and asked, ‘Chris, do you mind if I come and perform with you?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ He would sometimes do the early show and I’d do the late show or vice versa and performed with me for four years before he passed away.”
    And Owens has been equally generous in sharing her resources as well. Over the years she has donated to countless charitable events, schools, churches and other worthy causes. For the past quarter century, she has brought a major parade back to the French Quarter after the regular Mardi Gras parades were taken off the streets there. Her Chris Owens Easter Parade is an eagerly anticipated event every year, preceded by a sumptuous breakfast and an Easter Bonnet contest at a local hotel. Then it takes to the streets in colorful pageantry with the incomparable Miss Owens always reigning over the event from her lead float and throwing toy Easter bunnies to the crowd. “Every year it gets bigger and bigger and everyone wants to get involved with it. We get calls from Europe and all over the country for it. No place else in this country does something like this for Easter.”
The honors have been coming in too. Recently she was feted with a Crimefighters Award from a police support organization to go with her many other accolades over the years. Even more recently, a beautiful life-sized painting of her in a floral motif was unveiled at the New Orleans Museum of Art for their “Art in Bloom” show.
    Fitting honors for a living treasure whose talents, charm and generosity are unmatched and will never be duplicated.

    Chris Owens will be performing on the Jackson Square Stage at the French Quarter Festival on Saturday, April 18, and at Jazz Fest in the Economy Hall Tent, on Saturday April 25. Chris Owens’ Easter Parade will be on Sunday, April 12. For tickets to Easter Parade and breakfast, call Kitsy Adams at 495-8383.