Jammin’ for the One and Only Jesse Barry
Local Music Makers
By Peggy Ratusz
"I’ve basically been singing since the womb. My mom hosted karaoke when she was pregnant with me and I was raised on golden oldies music. One of my biggest influences is Aretha Franklin. When I was eight years old, we were blasting Aretha Franklin in the car and my mom turned it down and ‘swore she heard Aretha in her backseat.’
"That night, she took me and my brother Jade out to karaoke and I walked out of there with the $50 first prize. In less than a week there was a write-up in the paper about me. I became known as The Little Princess of Soul.
"They recorded me and played me on the radio after which hundreds of listeners called into the station asking about me.”
I interviewed our spotlight artist this month, the one and only Jesse Barry in 2010 for a profile I wrote in WNC Woman Magazine. The quote above is from that feature.
Jesse was steeped in American Idol buzz at that time, as she’d just won a golden ticket to Hollywood after auditioning regionally, to compete in the next round of the competition.
At that time, Tressa Thornton, owner of the legendary and now closed “Tressa’s Downtown Jazz & Blues” bar and I were organizing a fundraiser to help her with expenses.
The bar was packed that night in January of 2010, as practically all of Asheville’s music lovers gathered to watch the episode of the show in which Jesse appeared. To say the place was abuzz with excitement is not an understatement.
Press, family, fans were there and the effervescent Jesse was making the rounds, table to table, showing appreciation to the attendees literally one by one.
Though she didn’t make it past the Hollywood rounds, she went on to become a household name in WNC, forever our American Idol and sweetheart.
We started a crowdfunding campaign for Jesse last month. The money will help pay for everyday expenses and medical treatments. You can help here.
Remember when we were all on Myspace in the early 2000’s? In 2005 I received a message there from Jesse’s beloved late mother, singer, actor, artist, Tami-Lu.
She explained to me that her thirteen-year-old daughter was interested in pursuing a singing career and loved to belt the Blues.
At that time, I was hosting a weekly Blues jam at Tressa’s. Once I told Ms. Thornton about Jesse and her band, we invited them to play the following week. A capacity crowd gathered that school night to hear the fledgling superstars, Skinny Legs & All. They did not disappoint.
Subsequently, their trajectory pulsated with the Old School Soul, Rock and Blues sounds of Aretha Franklin, Susan Tedeschi, Tina Turner, BB King, The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt and more.
The Little Princess of Soul and her early teen aged band were making waves locally and regionally, igniting a buzz that helped put Asheville on the map as a loving and networking music town.
Jesse and her young band and the band she formed during college, Jesse Barry & the Jam, inspired musicians, Blues lovers and tourists for over a decade.
Also from that 2010 interview Jesse said “I’ve always been a persistent person. I’ve been on the honor roll throughout my academic career. I’m in the top 20 students of my grade level, and I’m in the National Honors Society.”
For Jesse, persistence has never been so profound an attribute to possess. Diagnosed with an exhaustive and complicated myriad of autoimmune syndromes, diseases, infections and afflictions, it’s been determined that all of this was triggered by Covid.
Despite efforts to work and perform through the pain, by the middle of 2022, the chronic fatigue that accompanies all these maladies forced Jesse out of the workforce and off the stage.
She was running out of money. She didn’t want to sell her house but in order to survive financially, it was the best option. After all, it was unknown when or if she’d be able to return to her previous lifestyle.
“I had this vision that I would use the money from the sale of my house to move; to heal at the beach. I didn’t understand at that point that this was going to be long term and a potentially permanent illness.”
That was the plan until sadly, her mom’s cancer returned. The prognosis for Tami-Lu was not favorable, complicating even more, the navigation of a rapidly changing existence for Jesse.
Before Covid, this Blues ingénue performed each week and live music lovers filled the venues she and the boys played. Their incredible collective musicianship was undeniable, and audiences thrived on the sounds they were puttin’ down.
This was therapy-music from an affable, Blues centric four-piece band and everyone knew it.
Jesse’s goals were culminating, and she began to produce tribute shows to pay homage to some of her favorite groups and songwriters. Dirty Logic, Asheville’s Steely Dan tribute band, was her brainchild and she was the first of two backing vocalists for the group along with Debrissa McKinney.
Her Carole King tribute show that included songs from Tapestry and the billboard hits King wrote, was a sell-out show each and every time she took it out to play.
Amazingly, Jesse’s been stretching the money from the sale of her house for over three years. She knew it would inevitably run out and it has. Treatments, medical specialists and alternative healing modalities are expensive and have all been out of pocket costs.
On October 10th, a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign was launched on her thirty-third birthday. I encourage anyone with the means to contribute here
Personalized merchandise and reissue tracks from Jesse’s Skinny Legs and All days are among the thank-you gifts. These tracks are part of Asheville’s history and more valuable than NFT’s!
As I write this, a “Jammin’ for Jesse” fundraising concert is in the works. By the time you’re reading this, plans will have come to fruition.
Feel free to message me on Facebook for details and look for our grassroots marketing of the event on social media to know when, where and what time!
Jesse’s persistence is what sustains her as she continues to manage her current circumstance; a reality she never fathomed. She’s the princess of persistence, while the ‘princess of soul’ waits patiently to return to the stage.
Peggy Ratusz is a vocal coach,
song interpreter, and songwriter.
For vocal coaching email her at
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