Some groupies relied on gimmicks to make sure they got the attention they were craving, and that was the case with Barbara Cope. For her unique use of the foodstuff when she slept with musicians, she was given the nickname of the Butter Queen — reportedly by a member of The Moody Blues — but it was the Rolling Stones who gave her a shout-out in their song, “Rip This Joint”: “Kiss me quick, baby, won’tcha make my day, Down to New Orleans with the Dixie Dean, Across to Dallas, Texas with the Butter Queen.”
Cope’s mention alongside Dallas wasn’t an accident. Buddy magazine’s one-time editor, Kirby Warnock, has said that pretty much everyone in the city knew who she was — especially the musicians she hung out with, which included everyone from the Stones to David Cassidy, Led Zeppelin… and somewhere around 2,000 others, give or take.
Her fame wasn’t lasting, though, and when she was killed in a house fire in 2018, The Dallas Morning News reported that her neighbors had no idea who she was. She was long retired, but not forgotten in music lore: Cope just gets a mention in the Stones’ song, but Three Man Army’s tribute to her was much more obvious. Called “Butter Queen,” the song asked what many people who weren’t in the know might be asking, “How come they call you butter queen?”
