Search - Leroy Carr :: Whiskey Is My Habit Women Is All I Crave: Best of

Great Music - Disappointing Value

07/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell made great music - no question about it, and much of it is included here.However, for the price, I found this compilation to be disappointing as the remastering doesn't strike me as all that solid. I believe a MUCH better value is Leroy Carr's "Essential" two disk set which contains virtually the same songs at almost half the price."

Good compilation of an overlooked artist's work

Lee C. Grady | Madison, WI USA | 03/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Leroy Carr deserves more attention than he has received over the years. His music was far more influential than most of the other blues artists of the 1920s and 30s - at least until white folk enthusiasts and rock stars "discovered" delta blues singers in the 1960s. Carr has a relaxed vocal delivery and piano style that really grows on you upon repeated listening. This is a good compilation of his work. I think it focuses a little too much on his 1934 sessions, and is missing the classic "When the Sun Goes Down" (the song that inspired Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain"). It also misses the true variety of his output. However, I think the remastering on this set is better than any other I've heard. I recognize that the remastering of 78 era recordings is a matter of taste. The approach with this set was to remove the random clicks and pops, but leave the background crackle intact. In my opinion, this preserves the dynamic qualities of the original recording. By contrast, the "Essential" collection on Classic Blues is a typical example of remastering using heavy noise reduction. This removes most of the background crackle but leaves the music sounding dull and lifeless (to my ears, anyway). My one problem with the sound on this compilation is that some of the source material is inferior - I don't believe that these records are particularly rare."