Katie Webster, singer, 63

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

LEAGUE CITY, Texas (AP) - Katie Webster, the blues singer known as ``The
Swamp Boogie Queen'' for her frenetic, two-fisted piano style, died Sunday
of a heart attack. She was 63.

Born Kathryn Jewel Thorne, Ms. Webster first learned to play gospel and
classical music.

Her parents, wary of secular influences, kept the piano locked up so she
couldn't play unsupervised.

As a teen, she moved in with more agreeable relatives in south Louisiana and
by age 15 became one of the most requested studio musicians in the region.
Her music appears on more than 500 singles cut in the 1950s and 1960s.

A young Otis Redding discovered her in 1964. She toured with him until his
death in a 1967 plane crash that might have killed her. She couldn't fly
because she was pregnant.

Devastated, Ms. Webster essentially stopped performing until the early
1980s, when she took Europe by storm. She became a favorite in the U.S.
blues festival circuit and recorded on the Chicago-based Alligator Records
label with the likes of Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt.

A 1993 stroke severely damaged her eyesight and use of her left hand, but
she continued to appear at select festivals.

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