Although she has a few great recordings out, notably Old Enough (1982, Asylum Records), produced by Jerry Wexler and Glenn Frey, Barton has to be seen live to be fully appreciated. She belts out her lyrics in a twangy voice so full of Texas that you can smell the barbecue sauce. She swaggers confidently about the stage, casually tossing her cigarette to the floor as the band kicks in on its first number. The grace, poise, and confidence she projects on-stage is part of a long tradition for women blues singers. The blues world still needs more good female blues singers like Barton, to help to broaden the appeal of the music to diverse audiences and to further its evolution.

Barton has a pair of excellent albums out on the Austin-based Antone's Records, Read My Lips (1989) and her cooperative effort with fellow Texas blues women Marcia Ball and Angela Strehli, Dreams Come True (1990). Old Enough was reissued on compact disc in 1992 on the Antone's label. Her recordings at the turn of the millennium included Thunderbroad (1999, Blues Factory) and Someday (2002, Catfish), and she has also subsequently guested on albums like Omar Kent Dykes' Big Town Playboy (Ruf Records, 2009). Here's hoping that this premier interpreter of Texas roadhouse blues will be well recorded in the years ahead.