[1] His father left when he was a young boy and his mother died when he was 14 years old, after which he lived with his grandparents.
[2] He developed a relationship with Thelma, whom he met on a dance floor in Ardmore, and they married on June 10, 1944.
While passing through Ogden, Utah, with his wife Thelma in 1945, the leader of the band McQueen was in at the time took the group's money,[4] later losing it while gambling on the way to Las Vegas.
[1] He performed with jazz musicians when they stopped in Utah, such as Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Paul Gonsalves, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Ray Charles.
[5] In 2002, the governor of Utah established April 18 as Joe McQueen Day.