Ellington first had an idea to write an opera about a Harlem beautician Madam C. J. Walker, a black millionaire, in 1930s.

[4] If you are agreeable to the eye Of your favorite guy You can make him hit the sky ... Just apply some Queenie Pie ... And try, I mean, BUY.

[4] Peress gives one piece of a dialogue that Ellington wrote for the opera:[4] Queenie: Li'l Daddy, this NUCLI?

[4] The opera is about Queenie Pie, a black beautician named best in town, who is challenged by a lighter-skinned woman, Café O'Lay.

Queenie's manager and lover, Holt Faye, falls in love with O'Lay, but she shoots and kills him in a quarrel.

"[5][6] In the early 1980s, John A. Williams and the composer and flautist Leslie Burrs, with the agreement of Mercer Ellington, began collaborating on the completion of Queenie Pie.