Leroy Carr - Complete Recorded Works Vols. 4-6 of 6
 Style: Piano Blues
Released: 1996/2005
Label: Document
File: mp3@320 K/s
Size: 164.2 MB
1 Gone Mother Blues - 3:04
2 Midnight Hour Blues - 3:07
3 Moonlight Blues - 3:11
4 The Depression Blues - 3:05
5 Mean Mistreatin' Mama - 3:07
6 Mean Mistreatin' Mama - 2:57
7 Mean Mistreatin' Mama No. 2 - 3:30
8 Court Room Blues - 3:14
9 Hurry Down Sunshine - 3:37
10 Corn Likker Blues - 3:41
11 Hold Them Puppies - 3:39
12 Shady Lane Blues - 3:44
13 Blues She Gave Me - 2:39
14 Yo Can't Run My Business No More - 3:08
15 Blues Before Sunrise - 3:04
16 Blues Before Sunrise - 3:14
17 I Ain't Got No Money Now 3:35
18 Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child - 3:38
19 Stormy Night Blues - 3:11
20 Take a Walk Around the Corner - 2:45
21 Baby Come Back to Me - 2:27
22 Blue Night Blues - 2:58
23 My Woman's Gone Wrong - 2:31
Notes: People living in the early 21st century would do well to consider complete immersion in more than an hour's worth of vintage Vocalion blues records made during the darkest days of the Great Depression by pianist Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Vol. 4 in Document's Complete Recorded Works of Leroy Carr contains 23 sides dating from March 1932 through August 1934, with three takes of "Mean Mistreatin' Mama" (suffused with a mood that almost certainly inspired Big Maceo's sound) and an extra version of Carr's beautifully straightforward "Blues Before Sunrise." This is not a "get up and shake your butt" kind of collection, and anyone who complains that it isn't has missed the entire point of historic blues appreciation altogether. In order to connect with this music you need to take a few deep breaths and let these men work on your nervous system with songs that hover and contemplate existence in the middle of the night (as in "Midnight Hour Blues"' "when the blues creep up on you and carry your mind away"), sometimes upgrading to the purposeful lope or the brisk walk, depending on what kind of real-life stuff is being processed. "Hold Them Puppies" and "You Can't Run My Business No More" seem to pulse with energy born of the friction that sometimes arises between two people who don't always see eye to eye. "Court Room Blues" is a boogie with complications in the air; "Take a Walk Around the Corner" is a boogie with murder in its eye. "I Ain't Got No Money Now" is a handsome cousin to Clarence "Pinetop" Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." As for "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," Carr has borrowed the title from the bedrock of African-American spirituals, but the song itself, like "Hurry Down Sunshine," "Moonlight Blues," and more than half the material on this collection, is a slow bluesy rumination on the difficulties of life in the world.
Leroy Carr - Vol. 4 (1932-1934)
 Style: Piano Blues
Released: 1996/2005
Label: Document
File: mp3@320 K/s
Size: 60 MB
1 South Bound Blues - 2:53
2 Barrelhouse Woman - 2:54
3 Barrelhouse Woman No. 2 - 2:42
4 Florida Bound Blues - 2:47
5 Cruel Woman Blues - 2:50
6 Muddy Water - 2:47
7 I Believe I'll Make a Change - 2:59
8 Black Gal, What Makes Your Head So Hard? - 3:05
9 Don't Start No Stuff - 3:01
10 George Street Blues - 3:06
11 Bo Bo Stomp - 2:54
12 Big Four Blues - 3:08
13 Hard Hearted Papa [Take 1] - 3:09
14 Hard Hearted Papa [Take 2] - 3:05
15 You Left Me Crying [Take 1] - 3:01
16 You Left Me Crying [Take 2] - 3:11
17 Broken Hearted Man - 2:49
18 Evil Hearted Woman - 2:49
19 Good Woman Blues - 3:00
20 Hustler's Blues - 2:39
21 Eleven Twenty-Nine Blues - 3:01
22 You've Got Me Grieving Mama - 3:10
Notes: Vol. 5 in Document's Complete Recorded Works of Leroy Carr focuses upon one of his last great periods of recording activity, from mid-August to mid-December 1934, providing the listener with 19 titles and three alternate takes. In addition to his main man Scrapper Blackwell, Carr is heard with guitarist Josh White on this collection, which is as strong as any other volume in Document's meticulously thorough Leroy Carr retrospective. Most of this music moves at an easy and unhurried pace, which is ideal for expressing simple intimate truths about loneliness, heartbreak, and interpersonal relationships. The ambling "George Street Blues" is more or less a sequel to Carr's "I Ain't Got No Money Now," and both songs are distantly related to Clarence "Pinetop" Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." While the instrumentation is almost invariably confined to piano and guitar, "Big Four Blues" is punctuated with blasts from a hand-held imitation train whistle. As is the case with almost everything Leroy Carr ever recorded, most of these songs describe passions, habits, and full-blown addictions unflinchingly. "Hustler's Blues" contains Carr's famous line "Whiskey is my habit, good women is all I crave," while "Eleven Twenty-Nine Blues" offers a concise account of how "My gal got arrested and they put her in the county jail." Performances with extra rhythmic punch are the brisk "Barrelhouse Woman," the boogie-based "Bo Bo Stomp," "Don't Start No Stuff," and "Muddy Water," during which an unnamed river overflows its banks and meets Leroy Carr at his doorstep.
Leroy Carr - Vol. 5 (1934)
 Style: Piano Blues
Released: 1996/2005
Label: Document
File: mp3@320 K/s
Size: 140.7 MB
1 Bread Baker - 3:04
2 Tight Time Blues - 2:59
3 Longing for My Sugar - 2:56
4 Black Wagon Blues - 3:06
5 Shining Pistol - 2:58
6 Arlena [Take 1] - 3:06
7 Arlena [Take 2] - 3:06
8 It's Too Short [Take 1] - 2:59
9 It's Too Short [Take 2] - 2:57
10 My Good for Nothin' Gal - 2:41
11 Suicide Blues - 3:01
12 Rozetta Blues - 2:53
13 Church House Blues - 2:49
14 Rocks in My Bed - 3:08
15 When the Sun Goes Down - 2:59
16 Bad Luck All the Time - 2:50
17 Big Four Blues - 3:12
18 Just a Rag - 3:12
19 Ain't It a Shame - 3:12
20 Going Back Home - 3:18
21 Six Cold Feet in the Ground - 3:03
Notes: Some 60 years after his passing, Leroy Carr's complete issued recordings were chronologically compiled and released on compact disc by Document Records, Ltd. The sixth and last installment in that exhaustively complete series picks up the trail on December 17, 1934, and follows his remaining Vocalion recordings with a spate of Bluebirds waxed on February 25, 1935. Almost every song heard on this collection moves slowly and deliberately, as if to support an extra load of Weltschmerz. Although "Bread Baker" is a robustly hedonistic hymn to physical pleasures, "It's Too Short" cooks like a boogie, and "Just a Rag" is upbeat, throughout most of this collection Carr's subject matter is far from uplifting. "Tight Time Blues" is about abject poverty; "Rocks in My Bed" (the inspiration for one of Duke Ellington's greatest laments) describes the ordeal of insomnia; "Arlena" seems to convey Carr's fear of being abandoned; and "Longing for My Sugar" and "When the Sun Goes Down" are studies in heartache and loneliness. Grimmer still is "Suicide Blues," with its description of brains being blown out of his skull with a gun fired by his own hand. The chilliest title of all is "Six Cold Feet in the Ground," an unmistakable premonition of his own impending demise. During the last months of his short life, Leroy Carr was not at all well. Years of heavy alcohol consumption combined with a case of what appears to have been tuberculosis wore him down and finished him off somewhat abruptly, for on April 29, 1935, 30-year-old Leroy Carr checked out far ahead of schedule in Indianapolis, the town where he had made his first record with guitarist Scrapper Blackwell back in 1928.
Leroy Carr - Vol. 6 (1934-1935)
Zippy
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Posted by muddyOznake: Leroy Carr, Piano Blues
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