Sloppy Drunk

by Andrew HamiltonThe 1920s/'30s blues star communicates via piano and vocals on 44 blues numbers from the genres' dinosaur days. Leroy Carr sang city blues about his life, friends, acquaintances, and people he heard about secondhand and third-party. A prolific writer too, Carr scribed most of these tunes, which he sings in a sincere whisky-drenched delivery (as the title implies). "Prison Bound Blues," "Papa's Got Your Water On," "Low Down, Dirty Blues," "Papa Wants a Cookie," "Christmas in Jail - Ain't It a Pain," and others provide an intimate peep into black life in the late '20s/early '30s. Carr's accompanied by Scrapper Blackwell and Josh White on guitars. This mammoth release on the long-deceased singer is as good a start as any in assembling a Leroy Carr collection.