Remembering Blues Queen Denise LaSalle

Photo: ©2011 Marilyn Stringer
On January 8th, Denise LaSalle died, surrounded by family, at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 78. LaSalle had been suffering from heart problems for some time, and complications from a fall saw the amputation of her right leg in October. None of these things slowed her down a bit.
Denise LaSalle was born Ora Denise Allen on July 16th, 1939. The youngest of eight children, her sharecropper family worked the fields in and around Leflore count