Barbara Crosby was born on January 9, 1941 in St. Louis and began singing in church as a choir girl, eventually forming a family gospel group called The Crosby Sisters. She joined a singing/dancing troupe in grade school and went on to sing in the high school choir, around which time she also helped start a singing group called the Comest Combo that played popular material at local clubs. In 1963, she joined a locally popular group called The Petites and met Oliver Sain through her brother-in-law (she adopted her husband's last name, Carr) and successfully auditioned to join Sain's band.

Carr signed a solo contract with Chess in 1966 and recorded soulful singles like "Don't Knock Love," "I Can't Stop Now," and "Think About It Baby" over the next few years. Without much success, she stopped recording for a period in the late '60s to raise her children, and then returned to Chess circa 1970, albeit still without much recognition. She left Sain's band in 1972, and sang with a number of other, mostly short-lived groups around the St. Louis area. Carr recorded another single for Gateway in the late '70s, "Physical Love Affair," but again found little promotional support.

She and her husband eventually formed their own label, Bar-Car, in 1982, and Carr issued a number of singles over the next few years, many recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama. This material helped form the basis for Carr's first full-length album, 1989's "Good Woman Go Bad", which was later reissued on Paula in 1994. A second collection, "Street Woman", was released on Bar-Car on cassette in 1992, then upgraded to CD in 1994. Word of Carr's recordings began to spread, and she wound up signing with the Ecko label in 1996, releasing her label debut, "Footprints On The Ceiling" in 1997. Her next record, "Bone Me Like You Own Me" solidified her reputation in the Soul Blues world. After a few more releases on Ecko Carr departed the label releasing a record plaintively titled "On My Own" followed by a forgettable disc for Mardi Gras ("Talk To Me") before returning to Ecko records in 2006 for two albums.

She signed with CDS Records in 2008 and a full band CD with 100% real instruments will be completed this year!