Leroy Carr

Leroy Carr was born March 27, 1905{{cite book |year=2014 |last=Williams |first=David L. |title=Indianapolis Jazz: The Masters, Legends and Legacy of Indiana Avenue |publisher=Arcadia Publishing Inc. |edition=Kindle |page=48}} in Nashville, Tennessee.{{cite book|title=The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music|editor=Colin Larkin|editor-link=Colin Larkin (writer)|publisher=Virgin Books|date=1997|edition=Concise|isbn=1-85227-745-9|page=230}} His parents were John Carr, a laborer at Vanderbilt University, and Katie Lytle, a domestic worker. After his parents separated, Carr moved to Indianapolis, Indiana with his mother. Carr was a self-taught piano player.{{cite web |url=https://www.wmky.org/arts-culture/2017-09-15/leroy-carr |title=Leroy Carr |publisher=Morehead State Public Radio |last=Hitchcock |first=Paul |date=September 15, 2017 |accessdate=January 11, 2023}} After dropping out of high school, Carr travelled with a circus, and in the early 1920s served in the U.S. Army.{{cite web |url=https://www.goldminemag.com/articles/before-there-was-hip-hop-there-was-leroy-carr |title=Before there was hip-hop, there was LeRoy Carr |first=Mike |last=Greenblatt |website=Goldmine |accessdate=12 January 2023}}{{cite web |url=http://www.thebluestrail.com/artists/mus_fb.htm |title=Leroy Carr / Francis Scrapper Blackwell |website=thebluestrail.com |accessdate=January 11, 2023 }} Carr returned to Indianapolis and worked in a meat-packing plant. He was married and had one daughter. Carr was convicted of bootlegging and served a year at the Indiana State Penitentiary.

Carr had a longtime partnership with the guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. His light bluesy piano combined with Blackwell's melodic jazz guitar attracted a sophisticated black audience. The two recorded with Vocalion Records beginning in the 1920s. His first hit was "How Long, How Long Blues", recorded in 1928.{{sfn|Wald|2010|pp=659}} Elijah Wald described Carr's music as "carefully written, blending soulful poetry with wry humor, and his music had a light, lilting swing that could shift in a moment to a driving boogie. Rather than Smith's vaudeville jazz combos or Jefferson's idiosyncratic country picking, Carr sang over the solid beat of his piano and the biting guitar of his constant partner Francis (Scrapper) Blackwell. The outcome was a hip, urban club style that signaled a new era in popular music".{{cite web |last1=Wald |first1=Elijah |title=Leroy Carr |url=https://www.elijahwald.com/carrtimes.html. |website=Elijah Wald |access-date=November 11, 2022}}

Carr was among the most prolific and popular blues artists between 1928 and 1935. His recording career was cut short by his early death, but he produced a large body of work. Some of his most famous songs include "Papa's on the House Top" (1931), "When the Sun Goes Down" (1931), "Blues Before Sunrise" (1932), "Midnight Hour Blues" (1932), and "Hurry Down Sunshine" (1934). He recorded for Vocalion until he signed with Victor's Bluebird imprint, where he made his final recordings.

Carr had a severe alcohol addiction. His last recording session was held in Chicago on February 25, 1935, in which the reportedly temperamental Blackwell stormed out before the session was finished and Carr recorded his final song, "Six Cold Feet in the Ground", as a solo.

Two months after the session, and a month after his 30th birthday, he died of nephritis and was buried in Floral Park Cemetery in Indianapolis.{{cite web |title=A Cultural Manifesto: Indy's musical graves

|first=Kyle |last=Long |date=October 27, 2015 |publisher=Nuvo |url=https://www.nuvo.net/music/a-cultural-manifesto-indys-musical-graves/article_291840c0-7a49-5afd-8e4f-ad50885003f0.html |access-date=December 25, 2022}}

Carr's vocal style moved blues singing toward an urban sophistication, influencing such singers as T-Bone Walker, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Ray Charles, among others.{{cite book |first= Arnold |last= Shaw |year= 1978 |title= Honkers and Shouters |url=https://archive.org/details/honkersshouterst00shaw |url-access= registration |publisher=Macmillan |location= New York City|pages= [https://archive.org/details/honkersshouterst00shaw/page/8 8–9] |isbn= 0-02-061740-2}}

Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing recorded some of Carr's songs, and Basie's band shows the influence of Carr's piano style.{{cite book |first= Charles |last= Keil |year=1991 |title= Urban Blues |url= https://archive.org/details/urbanblues0000keil |url-access= registration |publisher= University of Chicago Press |pages= [https://archive.org/details/urbanblues0000keil/page/65 65]–67, 107 |isbn= 0-226-42960-1 }}

Carr's music has been recorded by a long list of artists, including Robert Johnson, Ray Charles, Big Bill Broonzy, Moon Mullican, Champion Jack Dupree, Lonnie Donegan, Long John Baldry, Memphis Slim, Barrelhouse Chuck and Eric Clapton.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}

Carr was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1982.{{cite web |title=Award Winners and Nominees |website=Blues Hall of Fame|url=https://blues.org/awards/ |access-date=December 25, 2022}}

• Blues Before Sunrise (Columbia, 1962)
• Masters of the Blues, vol. 12 (Collector's Classics, 1971)
• Leroy Carr 1928–34 (K.O.B., 1971)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell: Naptown Blues 1929–1934 (Yazoo, 1973)
• Singin' the Blues 1937 (Biograph, 1973)
• Leroy Carr, vol. 2 (Collector's Classics, 197?)
• Don't Cry When I'm Gone (The Piano Blues, vol. 7) (Magpie, 1978)
• Leroy Carr 1928 (Matchbox, 1983)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell: Great Piano-Guitar Duets (1929–1935) (Old Tramp, 1987)
• Leroy Carr 1929–1934 (Document, 1988)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell 1929–1935 (Best of Blues, 1989)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell 1930–1958 (RST, 1989)
• Naptown Blues (Aldabra, 1992)
• Leroy Carr, vols. 1–6 (Document, 1992)
• Leroy Carr, vols. 1–2 (The Piano Blues series) (Magpie, 1992)
• Southbound Blues (Drive, 1994)
• Hurry Down Sunshine (Indigo, 1995)
• Naptown Blues (Orbis, 1996)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell: How Long Blues 1928–1935 (Blues Collection, 1997)
• American Blues Legend (Charly, 1998)
• Sloppy Drunk (Catfish, 1998)
• Prison Bound Blues (Snapper, 2001)
• P-Vine Presents 21 Blues Giants: Leroy Carr (P-Vine, 2001)
• The Essential Leroy Carr (Document, 2002)
• Whiskey Is My Habit, Women Is All I Crave (Columbia, 2004)
• Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell: The Early Recordings of an Innovative Blues Master, vol. 1, 1928–1934 (JSP, 2008)
• How Long How Long Blues (Wolf, 2008)
• When the Sun Goes Down 1934–1941 (JSP, 2011)

{{Reflist}}

• Wald, Elijah (2004). Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. HarperCollins. {{ISBN|0-06-052423-5}}.
• {{cite book |last=Wald |first=Elijah |authorlink=Elijah Wald |title=The Blues. A Very Short Introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-19-539893-9 |edition=Kindle}}

• [http://www.wirz.de/music/carr.htm Illustrated Carr discography]
• [https://blues.org/blues_hof_inductee/leroy-carr/ Leroy Carr Biography] on Blues Foundation

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Category:1900s births

Category:1935 deaths

Category:African-American pianists

Category:American blues singers

Category:American blues pianists

Category:American male pianists

Category:Musicians from Indianapolis

Category:Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee

Category:RCA Victor artists

Category:Vocalion Records artists

Category:Deaths from nephritis

Category:20th-century African-American male singers

Category:20th-century American male singers

Category:20th-century American singers

Category:20th-century American pianists