Sunday Morning Blues - Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell, Pee Wee Crayton, Bo Diddley

Continuing on with The ABC Of The Blues boxset (this'll be a going on until June or so...) - I pause for a moment to expand on my first quibble with this series. Volume 5 (from last week) featured one song from guitarist Scrapper Blackwell, who is most famous for his collaboration with Leroy Carr (Volume 9, this week). The quibble is that Blackwell returned to music in the late 1950s and recorded for several more years before he was killed, and none of that later music is here (thought much of the recordigns from 58 to 62 were posthumous releases). The irony is that the song featured is apparently a cover of a song that was rewritten from a song her originally wrote anyway... I'm not sure they didn't credit this song incorrectly to be honest.

The next quibble will come up several more times over the next few months - an artist with a disc all to themselves. Considering the depth, and breadth, of the achievement of this box set, giving over a full 20 songs to a single artist seems like they didn't dig deep enough to find artists we might not have heard of.

Volume 7 & 8

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell
Scrapper's history can be found in last Sunday's post. He and Leroy had a seven year carreer together that ended in a fight in the middle of a recording session, Leroy died shortly after that. Leroy came out of Nashville, TN, a vocalist and pianist, adding some light blues piano to Blackwell's jazz-blues style of guitar, and paved the way for the deeper more cosmopolitain voices of later artists. The two collaborated from 1928 to 1935 befire Carr died and Blackwell left music for twenty years. This makes them some of the earlist recorded blues.

Several, or all I think, of these recordings are taken from old 78s, only on a few is the hiss audible, and there are not artifacts such as pops and clicks. Good clean recordings of some old music here. These are very early blues songs, most of them are just Carr's piano and Blackwell's guitar, with usually Carr singing. Very much before later influences, most of the songs are slow, but there are few with a faster ragtime tempo. Until now I'd never heard any of these songs before, which is just the kind of gem I like this box set for. As with a lot of Blues before WWII, a lot of it is really old folk tunes and note "the blues" per se.

Pee Wee Crayton
Ever listen to an artist and never know who it was? I've heard several of the selections here, new knew who Pee Wee (Connie Curtis) Crayton was. From Texas, he had moved to Los Angeles, and picked up the guitar by 1935. It's rumored he was the first blues guitarist to use a Fender Stratorcastor. His guitar sound is distinct, so much so it's almost a style unto itself, and has been copied by other artists through the decades. the guitar is agressive, forward, like some kind of ZZTop prototype at times. His vocals, on the other hand, are smooth, softer, not nearly as loud.

These recordings are clean and clear. Some of them are just Crayton and his guitar, some are with a full backing band, with horns up front, giving him a jazz ensemble sound. But his guitar is never just put aside, always front and center. The guitar is the main voice as often as the singer. This is original, or classic, rhythm and blues music. I love the guitar work here, really amazing work, if you're a fan of guitar go find some of his recordings.

Bo Diddley
Bo gets all 20 Tracks on Disc 8 to himself, my quibble with that is above. Bo is occasionally called The Originator, which is a reference to him being the truly visible bridge between Blues and Rock And Roll. He sped things up, let his guitar really drive forward, and merged the two nicely. Without him Rock music wouldn't have developed so early and so quickly, his influence on both sides of the fence is great. Bo was still a kid in the 30s, when the other artists this week were recording. While he was born in Mississippi as Ellas Otha Bate (and later Ellas McDaniel after he was adopted by a cousin of his mother's), his family moved to Chicago in 1934. In the early 50s when he was getting into music he took the stage name Bo Diddley. He recorded with Billy Boy Arnold and other famous blues musicians from Chicago in the 1950s.

A good solid collection of early stuff from Bo here, I don't think any track here is later than the mid 1960s giving a nice early look at the artist. Some amazing early rock-blues classics (including the oiriginal Who Do You Love?) make their way here. I'm glad this focused on the early blues career, as the later stuff is easy to come by and often shows more rock than blues. Some of the stand out songs are Pretty Thing and Hey Bo Diddley, both really showcase some early rock beats. While The Story Of Bo Diddley and I'm A Man are pretty classic blues riffs. If you have no idea who this is run out right now and buy a Bo Diddley album, any one works.


Next Week: Willie Dixon, Floyd Dixon (no relation to each other), Snooks Eaglin', Sleepy John Estes.  Between the four we cover Texas, West Coast, Chicago, New Orleans, and Country blues.