Barbara Carr was born in St Louis, Missouri, United States, and, like many blues musicians, she got her start in church, performing with her two sisters. At age 16, she formed the Comets, a band that performed cover tunes. Her break came when a brother-in-law working in Gaslight Square said bandleader Oliver Sain was looking for a female vocalist to replace Fontella Bass. Carr got the job, which eventually led to her first solo recording contract with Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois, in 1966.

After returning to perform with local bands around St Louis, she again began recording but with little success. With her husband, she set up her own record label, Bar-Car, in 1982, and recorded a number of singles at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which provided the basis for her first album, Good Woman Go Bad, in 1989. A second album, Street Woman, followed in 1994. In 1996, Carr signed with Ecko Records, which produced such songs as “Footprints on the Ceiling”, “The Bo Hawg Grind”, “If You Can’t Cut The Mustard”, “The Right Kind Of Love”, and “Bone Me Like You Own Me”. While still with Ecko Records, Carr recorded “What A Woman Wants”, “Let A Real Woman Try”, “Rainbow”, “The Best Woman”, and “Stroke It”. Carr recorded eight albums with Ecko, including a best of compilation album, Best of Barbara Carr.

In 2013 and 2014, Carr was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the ‘Soul Blues Female Artist’ category.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Barbara Carr among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.