Dupree was a New Orleans blues and boogie-woogie pianist, a barrelhouse "professor". His father was from the Belgian Congo and his mother was part African American and Cherokee. His birth date has been given as July 4, July 10, and July 23, 1908, 1909, or 1910; the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give July 4, 1910.
He was orphaned at the age of eight and sent to the Colored Waifs Home in New Orleans, an institution for orphaned or delinquent boys (about six years previously, Louis Armstrong had also been sent to the Home, after being arrested as a "dangerous and suspicious character"). Dupree taught himself to play the piano there and later[when?] apprenticed with Tuts Washington and Willie Hall, whom he called his father and from whom he learned "Junker's Blues". He was also a "spy boy" for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians. He soon began playing in barrelhouses and other drinking establishments.
He began a life of travelling, living in Chicago, where he worked with Georgia Tom, and in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he met Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. He also worked as a cook. In Detroit, after Joe Louis encouraged him to become a boxer, he fought 107 bouts, winning Golden Gloves and other championships and picking up the nickname Champion Jack, which he used the rest of his life.

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