Bands

Uptown Cover-Up
Uptown Cover-Up is a cover band that has a little something for everyone. For North Star Blues they are combining forces with Jon Olsen on keys and a horn section to create a diverse live blues music experience. Join them for a special night of dancing and grooving to a wide variety of blues styles and tempos, including your ballroomin’ blues favorites! Make sure to stretch and warm up, take your vitamins and hydrate, you’ll be on the dance floor all night!

Cornbread Harris
James Samuel "Cornbread" Harris Sr. is a Minneapolis-based singer, pianist, and composer with a large repertoire influenced by blues and jazz. He was a performer on Minnesota's first rock 'n' roll record, and is the father of record producer Jimmy Jam. At 99 years old, he's still playing Minneapolis nightclubs, and puts on a great show full of spirit and humor.
venmo @soule590 buy music!...more coming soon!
DJs

Susan Olson
she/herSusan loves many different kinds of blues music, but there are special places in her heart for ballroom blues, badass female singers, and funky rhythms. She has deejayed at North Star Blues, Sweet Molasses Blues, bluesSHOUT!, Blues Muse, BluesGeek and numerous other events in addition to frequent local dances in her home scene of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Susan enjoys nothing more than keeping people up past their bedtimes dancing to amazing music and can't wait to be back home behind the DJ table.

Jen Delk
she/herAt age 3, Jen started her DJ career in the basement, on a Fisher Price record player, before an audience of dolls. She spent countless hours listening to funk, disco, soul, jazz, R&B, and pop music throughout her childhood and went on to study music from elementary through high school. After moving to Austin, the “live music capital”, she fell hard for dancing in dive bars to gritty blues, jazz, and swing music. She started DJing for a live audience in college when she ran a small swing dance club on campus and started teaching classes. Jen lives in Denver now. She DJs for Blues and Swing dances locally and out of town, obsesses over the music choices for classes, and goes out to see live music as often as possible.

Julie Brown
any/all pronounsJulie Brown has DJed many of the biggest blues dance events around the U.S. After breaking onto the national blues dance DJ scene by winning the 2009 East-Meets-West Blues DJ contest, Julie went on to DJ at Emerald City Blues, bluesSHOUT, Blues Muse, Mile High Blues, Bambloozled, Red Hot Blues & BBQ, and more. From acoustic to electric, harmonicas to horn sections, New York to West Coast, Julie digs all the blueses, as long as it's got mood and groove. Some of Julie's current favorite artists include Billie Holiday, Slim Harpo, Brianna Thomas, Memphis Slim, and B.B. King. Julie also DJs regularly in Boston, where they live, dance, and work.

Cortnie Cook
Cortnie thoroughly loves getting dancers out on the floor with a library full of tunes that’ll inspire the comfiest close embrace, get your feet movin’, and fill your soul. Some of Cort’s favorite artists include Professor Longhair, Young Rell, Tuba Skinny, Odetta, Jimmy Reed, and Etta James, just to name a few or six. Cortnie’s DJ’ed in a few places, such as regional favorites like Blues at the Bean and North Star Blues beyond the Midwest, which is best housing her local scenes of Chicago and Grand Rapids. Cortnie has spun at Steel City, Blues Muse, Montreal Bagel and Blues, along with many others. The only other thing loved as much as playing those sweet tunes for you is getting to dance with y’all, so please ask!

