Queenie Pie

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.

Madam C. J. Walker, prototype of Queenie Pie