Mr. Scrapper's Blues Guitar

AMG Review of Mr. Scrapper's Blues Guitar

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All Music Guide

There really aren't very many Scrapper Blackwell collections to choose from, especially compared to what's available by his famous colleague Leroy Carr or his contemporaries Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red. No one has ever put together a more comprehensive Scrapper Blackwell retrospective than Document's unprecedented mid-'90s three-volume series of his complete recorded works, which made 64 reissued titles from the years 1928-1960 available in chronological sequence. P-Vine's Mr. Scrapper's Blues Guitar, a 50-track double-disc released in 2002, comes close to the splendor of Document's achievement without including anything recorded after the mid-'30s. Beginning with his very first solo recording (the "Kokomo Blues" of June 16, 1928), P-Vine lays out the guitarist's best work as a solo act and in close collaboration with Leroy Carr, tossing in a handful of records cut in the company of Bertha "Chippie" Hill and Dot Rice, and finishing off with examples of how he sounded when sitting in with pianist Jimmie Gordon and singing guitarist Bumble Bee Slim in 1935, the year of Carr's death. Virtually any Scrapper Blackwell collection is well worth having in your life; this one is exceptionally fine.