Miss Blues is about as genuine as they come in the music world. The 74-year-old blues singer is warm, open, unabashedly honest, and will ask you a question about yourself just as willingly as she’ll answer one about her own life.

And what a life it’s been. Miss Blues was born Dorothy Choncie Ellis on a Texas cotton plantation. She worked alongside her mother in the fields from a young age for meager wages. Her father was an abusive man who disappeared for months at a time, and her mother eventually moved herself and her daughter to another town to escape him. He found them anyway, and showed up at their house and threatened them with a knife. In an instance of seemingly superhuman strength, Dorothy’s mother seized the knife from her husband and broke it with her bare hands.

Dorothy learned to sing from her mother, who warbled quietly to pass the time in the cotton fields. She had a distinctive, powerful voice that belied her age, and soon was singing at a juke joint on the plantation, and later at an all-black hospital where her mother took a job in Paris, Texas. One day, a man came to record her singing and made a red vinyl record out of it.

Dorothy’s mother died while working at that hospital when her daughter was only eight. She set out on her own – traveling north to Oklahoma City to earn a living however she could. She started working at a beer garden when she was only 14 years old, where she often sang to the customers. She later became a full-time cook for a wealthy white family, until an experience with a visiting Washington D.C. socialite made up her mind to quit.

The woman loved Dorothy’s angel food cakes, and the family who employed her sent Dorothy to deliver one of her cakes to the penthouse suite where their friend was staying. The hotel elevator was for whites only, so Dorothy had no choice but to climb flight after flight of stairs with the cake. As she thought about the nature of the entire situation, something inside of her changed that day.

She kept performing at clubs around town – no gig was too small – and saved every penny she made. In 1954, she sang with a real band for the first time. They called themselves the Rockin' Aces and featured Little Eddie Taylor. Dorothy later paid her way into the Oscar Rose Junior College in Oklahoma City, and went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Decades later, her musical career is still blossoming. She has recorded several albums, performed around the world and earned many musical accolades, including a 2004 induction into the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame, and also found the time to pen a southern cookbook. She still maintains an active touring schedule, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Miss Blues caught up with Splash! via telephone from her Oklahoma City home. Her plans for the day included searching for the perfect spring watermelon to share with a group of friends, but she generously took a lengthy time-out to discuss her life, her music and the unlikely road she traveled to establish a successful musical career. Excerpts from that conversation are below.

You grew up working on a cotton plantation in Texas, you had an abusive father and were orphaned at a young age. And yet, you’ve accomplished so much in your life – writing, recording, performing, earning a master’s degree. From where did you draw that strength?

You know really, the last story they did about me nearly brought tears to my eyes, because you know, when you’re going through stuff like that you never realize that it’s that tough until you get older and look back over it. I don’t know where I drew the strength. I guess because I was a blues singer.

How has overcoming all of that adversity affected you as an artists?

Well, it made me develop a passion for the blues and the lyrics and my interpretation.

Your signature singing style has been described by critics as the Texas Shout. Can you break that down for me?

Mainly what it is – it’s just like a preacher on a Sunday morning. It’s got the hoops and the hollers, too – just like a Baptist preacher.

It was that strong voice that earned you the nickname Little Miss Blues when you were only a little girl. You performed the song “Good Mornin’ Blues” on Easter Sunday 1943, and you received $2.50 for your performance. And you’ve still got that voice today?

Right. I’ll be 75 in September, and the Lord still… my voice has not broke yet. Not yet.

How long have you been performing and touring? Do you ever get tired of it or think about retiring?

No, no. No, no, no, no. I’ve been singing now for 67 years professionally, getting paid for it. No, I’m not thinking about retiring. If I would retire, what am I going to do – sit in this house? I’m not going to retire at all. When I shut my eyes and close in, then cremate me and throw me in a juke joint somewhere.

You seem to take your professional duties as a performer very seriously – the way you present yourself, the way you address an audience. Where do these values come from?

When people pay money to see you, you should look professional. It bugs me to no end to see these so-called blues singers up there with tore-up blue jeans on and all that stuff like that. Uh-uh. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to look the part. You can put on something at least so when they go home they didn’t see someone that looks like they’ve been out plowing all day. That’s the way I feel.

You began working as a cook when you were very young to get by on your own. Why did you eventually pursue music instead?

When I was a kid coming up, that’s what I did – I was a cook for the movers and the shakers back in the early 40s and the 50s. I’m sure you read the story of what made me quit cooking. You know who that was, don’t you?

No, I don’t.

(Names a well-know society woman visiting Texas at the time, who she asked not to be identified.) I know that woman’s name just as good as I know my own. That’s who that was. She was famous in Washington D.C. She loved my angel food cakes. And do you know, I have not had a piece of angel food cake since?

You went on to write a cookbook, though, titled Hoecakes and Collard Greens: Sage Concoctions and Doin’s. Are there any similarities between cooking and making music?

I think they’re both about the same. You either have a passion for cooking or a passion for singing. I have a passion for both of them. I love cooking. I don’t do too much of it now, but years ago, a lot of the old musicians used to come here and eat – people like Bo Diddley have been to my house, and Richard “Groove” Holmes – he’s been here. A lot of people have been here through the years and had food. Richard “Groove” Holmes’ favorite thing for me to cook for him was spaghetti. He’s dead now, but he loved my spaghetti.

These days, from what do you draw your musical inspiration?

Here lately, I’ve been looking at what surrounds me, and what’s around me has developed into a song called “Billie’s Blues” – who is my dear friend, and it’s her relationship I wrote about. Then I wrote one called “Margree’s Blues,” and that’s about one of my girlfriends and her relationship with her husband. We sit out there and we talk about these things, so I just put it to song. And they’re all dead now, except Margree’s not dead, but Billie’s dead. She did get a chance to hear the song before she died. “Margree’s Blues” sings, “You’ve got one hand on my body/ and the other one on my pocket book.” And these are real people, and that’s the way that all of my songs are real. Those are true stories – every one of them. I don’t have a story that’s not true. The only thing that’s been embellished is one verse of “Sinking” – when I said the state came and took the children, which, there was no children involved in this relationship. But that one’s about my Daddy and this 28-year-old woman that he married. I guess you could say that I draw things from what’s around me – true things that are around me. And I think that’s the best kind, ‘cuz then you can feel those things.

What can Topekans expect when you perform July 3 at Uncle Bo’s?

I’m going to bring you something that a lot of times you do not get the chance to hear – I’m bringing you an evening chock full of traditional blues. I’m a traditional blues singer. You know, I do rock ‘n’ roll, I do all kinds of songs – I can sing anything now, and every so often I will throw in a little something, but I am a traditional blues singer. So the blues purists and all those kinds of people can expect to sit back and relax and hear a woman singing a little Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and all of those things. Those are the songs I sing. I don’t sing too many female songs.

I’ve got some friends coming in from California for that performance. I don’t know what it is about me and Topeka, but these people be driving in and flying in. So I’d better have a good performance – I can’t have people flying in from all over the United States and do a bad performance. (Lets out a long, hearty laugh.) It’s going to be quite an evening, I tell you.