1- Introduction By Duncan Schiedt
2- E Blues (guitar Solo)
3- A Blues (guitar Solo)
4- Cold Blooded Murder (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify
5- How Long Blues - No. 1 (piano solo)
6- Untitled Blues #1 (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify
7- Little Boy Blues
8- My Heart Struck Sorrow (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify
9- Untitled Blues #2 (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify
10- Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
11- You're Down And Out
12- Untitled Blues #3 (guitar solo)
13- Shady Lane Blues
14- Blues Before Sunrise
15- Sally-In-The-Alley-Blues
16- Shady Lane Blues
17- E Blues (guitar solo)
18- Goin` To Jail About Her
19- Soft Blues (guitar solo)
20- No Good Woman Blues
21- Leaving You Blues
22- Blue`n Whistling (guitar solo)
23- Back Step Blues

Live at 144 Gallery Indianapolis, Ind., September 20th, 1959 (1 – 13)
The Complete 77 Recordings, March 31 & April 14, 1960 (14 – 23)

Like most present day blues singers, Brooksie Berry has been exposed to many traditions and absorbed varied influences, but the old country blues from the South are the backbone of her singing. She was born in March, 1915, in the country town of Sturgis, near the Ohio River in western Kentucky. As a girl she heard the blues which had drifted up along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from the Mississippi Delta country and recalls that the blues was the only music one could hear, with the exception of some string band dance music, outside of church; the young people would gather on some porch in the evenings and sing blues. Brooks mother taught her to play simple accompaniments on the guitar.

When she was in her middle teens Brooks moved up to Indianapolis, where she has lived ever since. She arrived in. Indianapolis during that city's heyday as a blues center; Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell were becoming famous as recording artists and were part of a large group of singers and musicians who could be heard at the house parties and gathering places around Indiana and Northwestern Avenues. Brooks learned the relaxed and ingrating blues that Leroy and his friends sang, blues with "that lonesome touch," as one singer put it, and these blended with the old country blues that she had grown up with, as well as with the very different jazz blues of the twenties that she had learned from the records of singers like Ida Cox and Bessie Smith.

Brooks met Scrapper shortly after she moved to Indianapolis and thus began a long though at times stormy friendship that was to end suddenly some fifteen months after the last of the present recordings were made. On October 6, 1962. Scrapper was shot to death in a back alley near his home. Brooks has been, during the four years I have known her, reluctant to sing blues without her friend's sensitive guitar or piano playing behind her; and she will sing less and less now that he is gone.

Brooks life has been for the most part unhappy; in recent years most of her family and many of her old friends have died. She finds it hard to make a living—the only employment she can get is occasional housekeeping, or "day work." She has very seldom had the opportunity to earn money by singing. Beset by loneliness and trouble, she remains a patient and unembittered person. Although she sings infrequently one has the feeling that her blues are a safety valve for the pressures of a hard life. Singing blues is for Brooks not a social activity or a performance for others, although it once might have been, but rather a completely internal and personal expression. She sings with her eyes shut, swaying back and forth to her music, apparently unconscious of those around her. It is a deeply moving and often slightly awkward experience to listen to her sing—one sometimes feels that he is intruding or her most private thoughts and feelings.

Brooks says that in order to sing the blues, "you have to get to studying about the blues, get the blues on your mind." This is important'-- her own esthetic demands that singing the Blues be a serious thing, that the emotion felt must be intense and completely engulf the singer; then the verses will fall into place and the sense of the song emerge. This is her only criterion for her own singing and for that of others. She will accept any sort of music that seems to have emotional validity 'That Ricky Nelson singing Lonesome Town, well, you can tell that boy's girl friend left him, and he got it on his mind to sing about it." However, she dislikes flamboyant, showy singing "I despise to hear records of the blues with all that whoopin' and hollerin'!" She's aware that she has "a plain, heavy voice," and feels that it serves her purposes well.

The blues which Brooks sings were recorded during the summer of 1961, with the exception of numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 on side A. These were recorded on portable equipment in late December, 1959, and their sound quality is poorer than that of the more recent recordings. However, Brooks has not since matched the textual richness and the emotional power of these blues, and it was felt that they had to be included. --- wirz.de

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1. Goin' Where The Monon Crosses The Yellow Dog - 4:45
2. Nobody Knows You When You're Down An Out - 4:58
3. 'A' Blues - 3:53
4. Little Girl Blues - 5:11
5. George Street Blues - 4:21
6. Blues Before Sunrise - 5:08
7. Little Boy Blue - 3:07
8. 'E' Blues - 3:52
9. Shady Lane - 5:52
10. Penal Farm Blues - 4:32

Personnel:
Francis 'Scrapper' Blackwell - Vocals, Guitar, Piano (on tr.9 only)

Blackwell, it's not always remembered, was rediscovered in the late 1950s, though he didn't have much chance to make a new career out of the blues revival before his death a few years later. He performs well, but not wonderfully, on this July 1961 session in Indianapolis, accompanied only by his guitar (although he uses piano on one song, "Little Girl Blues"). His guitar playing is in better shape than his vocals, and, in fact, his instrumental work is sparkling on tunes like "Blues Before Sunrise," where the pacing and alternation of chords and single-note runs is immaculate. The instrumental "'A' Blues" is also a standout in its tradeoffs between high and low notes. It's mostly blues of a slow and deliberate, if varied, pace, though "Little Boy Blues" picks up the mood into a charging, swinging rhythm. ---Richie Unterberger, Rovi

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Vol.1
01. Kokomo Blues ............ 03:05
02. Penal Farm Blues ........ 03:23
03. Mr. Scrapper's Blues .... 02:51
04. Down And Out Blues ...... 02:54
05. Trouble Blues Part 1 .... 03:04
06. Trouble Blues part 2 .... 03:02
07. Non Skid Tread - Scrapper Blackwell, Bertha "Chippie" Hill ... 03:11
08. Be Da Da Bum ............ 03:33
09. Springtime Blues ........ 03:15
10. Rocky Luck Blues ........ 02:58
11. Mean Baby Blues (Robinson's Knights Of Rest) ... 02:50
12. Rambling Blues .......... 02:35
13. Blues Day Blues ......... 02:48
14. Down South Blues ........ 02:59
15. Sneaking Blues .......... 02:50
16. Hard Times Blues ........ 02:52
17. Back Door Blues ......... 02:51
18. Down In Black Bottom .... 03:03
19. My Dream Blues .......... 03:04
20. Whiskey Man Blues ....... 03:16
21. Mix That Thing .......... 02:57


Vol.2
01. Morning Mail Blues ........ 03:27
02. Blues That Make Me Cry .... 03:16
03. Mean Mistreatin' Mama ..... 02:41
04. She's Alright With Me ..... 02:42
05. D Blues ................... 02:46
06. A Blues ................... 03:06
07. My Old Pal Blues [Dedicated to the Memory of Leroy Carr] ... 03:02
08. Bad Liquor Blues .......... 02:48
09. Alley Sally Blues ......... 02:52
10. No Good Woman Blues ....... 02:40
11. The Death of Leroy Carr ... 03:03
12. Smoky Mountain Blues ...... 03:10
13. Motherless Boy Blues ...... 02:43
14. Wayback Blues ............. 02:52
15. Texas Stomp ............... 03:29
16. Sail on Sail on Blues ..... 03:08
17. Hey Lawdy Mama ............ 02:59
18. Little Girl Blues ......... 03:56
19. Life of a Millionaire ..... 03:44
20. Little Boy Blue ........... 03:14
21. Blues ..................... 04:06

Francis ‘Scrapper’ Blackwell was born in 1903 in North Carolina and was still a child when his family moved to Naptown. (Indianapolis) Credited later as being the man responsible for moving the blues from the country to the city, Blackwell was a guitarist of highly impressive skills and a sensitive songwriter. Scrapper Blackwell is an important link to modern Urban Blues. He recorded throughout the late 1920s and '30s, most often with pianist Leroy Carr. The guitar style he developed based around sophisticated single string-soloing, pointed the way for the guitar heroics that became a big part of most Electric Blues in the '40s and '50s, whose major proponent was T-Bone Walker.

Leroy Carr was a songwriter with many stories to tell and in teaming with Scrapper Blackwell, a guitarist of enormous stature; the pair managed many hits in their time together. They were primarily known for the 1928 signature tune “How Long, How Long, Blues.” As a duo, they juggled immense popularity, busy recording schedules, jook joint performances, bootleg operations, arguments, and much more in their years together. Running the gamut from introspective blues, “You Got To Reap What You Sow,” and “Six Cold Feet In The Ground,” to the comical, near-hokum approach, “Box Car Blues” and “Papa Wants A Cookie.”

Although the partnership was a success on record, Leroy and Scrapper had their personal difficulties. At one session they went in together and a disagreement ensued, the two were separated; both finishing their studio time recording solo. Blackwell was reportedly dissatisfied with getting less than his fair share of credit and financial rewards as he claimed to have written many titles with his sister, Mae Malone. Whatever the disagreements, when Carr died in 1935, from Nephritis due to his extreme intake of alcohol, Scrapper mourned the loss of his longtime friend with “My Old Pal Blues” at a July session.

Scrapper went on to do quite a bit of recording on his own, “Bad Liquor Blues” is a fine 21 track testament to his wide ranging abilities and importance in both areas. Scrapper's “Kokomo Blues” from a 1928 recording session was reworked by Kokomo Arnold, another guitarist and bootlegger as well, and later by Robert Johnson into “Sweet Home Chicago,” which became the anthem for the Windy City. An intricate player, Blackwell was known for stunning treble runs, driving rhythms, and powerful string snaps that stunned the competition. His rolling “A Blues” and the equally impressive “D Blues,” both instrumental pieces from a 1935 date, show the evidence to great effect. His touching “Blues That Make Me Cry” and “Morning Mail Blues” from 1934 prove him to be rather adept at the piano as well, and the two-part “Trouble Blues” will satisfy any curiosity as to how deft he was with guitar in hand. The previously mentioned “My Old Pal Blues” following the death of Leroy Carr, shows Scrapper teamed with Dot Rice on piano in an attempt to recapture the earlier brilliance but was only successful, in impressing again, his fleet-fingered style.

As a solo artist, his records never sold anywhere near as well as when he worked with Carr. Indeed, the number of existing 78's with Blackwell as a solo artist attest to that, as they are rare items. Disgusted with the record business, he went to work as a laborer for the Indianapolis Asphalt Plant and only returned to music in 1958 after much coaxing from Art Rosenbaum. He went into the studio and recorded “Mr. Scrapper’s Blues,” this marvelous 1960 recording not only shows him to be in first-rate form as a guitarist and singer but also finds him playing some fine piano. The years of manual employment did nothing to diminish his skills and his newfound success finally bore some financial gain. Sadly, that success would be short-lived. He was shot and killed in 1962 following a dispute with a neighbor. ---James Nadal, musicians.allaboutjazz.com

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