Lady J Huston

Trumpet & music director for Albert King, she got her first taste of fame as the vocalist with Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer Johnnie Johnson

'The Soulstress of the Blues'

The Lady J Huston Band

Simply the best

– Winner 2023 Blues Blast Magazine Award “New Artist Debut Album”
– Blues Nominee: Hollywood Independent Music Award, the Soul Music Awards & more.
– #3 for 2023 Top Soul- Blues Album on Roots Music Report.
Las Vegas Entertainers Black Music Awards (BMA)
2012 winner for “Best Blues Performer”
2010 winner for “Best Blues Band”
2009 winner for “Best Blues Performer”

Independent Entertainers Association (IEA) “Rock The Economy Music Festival” Featured Artist

America’s Got Talent Season 3 Audition Allstars Cast
Juneteenth Jazz & Blues Festival Headliner, Arcosanti, AZ

Classic Soul, Jazz and Blues

Originally from St. Louis, MO, [Joyce Ann Huston] graduated as Valedictorian & voted Most Talented Student-Female at the original Central High School. She majored in music at Howard University after which she moved to Los Angeles, CA pursuing her music as Lady J Huston where she also earned a B.S. in Business Administration. She eventually settled in Las Vegas where she worked as a sub-contractor in Systems for the Dept. of Energy while achieving great heights headlining Blues shows, festivals & more!

Living Blues, July 2023 by David Whiteis
Lady J Huston - Groove Me Baby | Groove Me Baby Album Review
Earwig Music/UniSun Productions - EWR-4980

St. Louis native Joyce "Lady J" Huston was raised in a musical family; her mother, the late Loyce P. Huston, was a noted entertainer and recording artist in the St. Louis area. Before she was in her teens, young Joyce was appearing as a dancer on her mother's shows. No doubt influenced by her mother's ethic of professionalism and excellence, she also majored in music, eventually studying music theory and composition at Howard University. Her biography credits her with facility in at least 15 instruments, most notably the trumpet—she played lead trumpet in Albert King's band for a while, eventually becoming King's musical director. Now on her own as a blues singer, she has released what appears to be her first-ever solo album, featuring a set that includes eight original compositions (three co-written by Zelma Lipsky), two songs originally recorded by her mother, and the standard Born under a Bad Sign, obviously a tribute to her old boss Albert King, on which guitarist Jason Cooper weighs in with an admirable approximation of King's string-bending style.

From the first notes of the opening number, Your Call, it's clear that Lady J, who spent several years performing on the Las Vegas circuit, is a show woman of the old school— the sound is deep and wide, burnished by a brawny horn section that includes Huston herself on several tracks, and charged with the kind of house-wrecking ebullience that's impossible to fake (aside from her duties as songwriter and lead singer, Huston also did the arrangements for this session). Her vocals likewise sound pitched to fill a room, if not an auditorium: they're flamboyant and theatrical, almost as if she's acting out her storylines as she sings them. A lesser artist could easily have crossed the line into bathos, especially on a heart-rent ballad like Tearing Me Apart, but Huston has the knack of embellishing her lines with a chiaroscuro-like melisma that accentuates, rather than obscures or parodies, the intensity of the emotions she's conveying.

SHuston's renditions of her mother's songs—the easy-swinging I Want a Man Like That, the saucy Big Beautiful Woman's anthem 500 Pounds Good Gizzay—are both affectionate and resolutely personalized (she updated the arrangements for this project, and according to her liner notes she also tweaked a few lyrics); she's clearly placing her own stamp on Ms. Loyce's beloved legacy. And throughout, the set is spiced by Huston's trumpet solos—dexterous and sure, rife with echoes of such past masters as Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown, harking all the way back to the founding father, Louis Armstrong. Her muted horn line in the intro to Groove Me Baby, likewise rich and expressive, further whets our appetite for more of the same—as does this entire album. Lady J is definitely a name to keep an eye on, and a voice to keep our ears peeled for, in the future.

ABOUT LADY J HUSTON BAND

Lady "J" Huston is a multi-talented entertainer. Accomplished as a singer, songwriter, musician and recording artist, she has performed on many stages across the country, appearing on television & radio internationally, in news print & other media.

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SOUL - BLUES - JAZZ