Christopher Wyze & The Tellers — “Naptown Blues” — Big Radio Records
Christopher Wyze & The Tellers are an Indianapolis-based blues band whose latest album, “Naptown Blues,” is a delightful tribute to another Indianapolis blues combo whose music helped shape the early years of blues nearly a century ago — Leroy Carr and Srapper Blackwell.
Wyze’s own music is lyrically literate; he’s a smartly articulate teller of original tales filled with the essence of the blues. His harmonica stylings help shape his musical expressions. “Naptown Blues” is his way of honoring the Carr-Blackwell legacy by re-creating a session based on their timeless music.
Carr was a piano player whose sophisticated vocal style influenced such singers as T-Bone Walker, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn, Jimmy Witherspoon and Ray Charles.
Francis “Scrapper” Blackwell’s guitar work was light and often jazz-like in its lyrical style but could also be raw and assertive. Blackwell’s influence was widespread, and Lonnie Johnson, who would become one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century, credited Blackwell as one of his key inspirations
Music historian Elijah Wald has called Carr “the most influential male blues singer and songwriter of the first half of the 20th century,” and has described Carr and Blackwell’s sound as “a hip, urban club style that signaled a new era in popular music.”
The term Naptown as a nickname for Indianapolis is about as old as the Blackwell-Carr recordings. References to Naptown appear as early as 1927 in an Indianapolis Recorder article about jazz musicians. The Indianapolis Recorder was then, like today, the city’s highest-circulating African-American newspaper, says Jill Weiss Simins, a historian at the Indiana Historical Bureau. Throughout the 1930s, Naptown was used regularly to refer to Indianapolis in articles about music, baseball and social events, not the sleepy connotation it might suggest. It was the home of Vocalion Records, where the duo recorded.
All of this history is interesting, but the real magic lives in the music.
Wyze and the Tellers — John Boyle III on guitar and Hammond organ, and Gerry Murphy on acoustic bass — have created a thoughtful and enjoyable album that reaches back to display the musical and lyrical eloquence that Carr and Blackwell brought to the blues in the late 1920s and ’30s.
They’ve chosen some of their favorite Carr-Blackwell songs for the session, leading off with a crisp Wyze vocal, spiced with his harp work on “I’m Going Back to Tennessee” — “Ain’t got nobody, to care for me / Gonna pack my trunk and go back to Tennessee.” The joyous title track follows, with Naptown’s pleasures felt through the music of Carr and Blackwell, all reflected through Wyze’s natural vocals and down-home harp: “When you get to Naptown, the blues won’t last very long, long / Because they have their pleasure, and they sure do carry on, on.”
“How Long, How Long Blues” is a classic blues with a gorgeous melody that inspired countless covers and later compositions, including the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Sitting on Top of the World” and Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen.” Muddy Waters has said that it was the first song he learned to play “off the Leroy Carr record.” Wyze delivers with a respectfully quiet vocal and mournful harp.
Wyze has included another pair of blues standards: the plaintive “Midnight Hour Blues” and “Kokomo Blues,” later turned into “Sweet Home Chicago” by Robert Johnson. Other tracks, all masterfully done, include “The Truth About the Thing,” “My Own Lonesome Blues,” “Tired of Your Low Down Ways,” “You Got to Reap What You Sow” and “Prison Bound Blues.”
The closer, “Birthday in Jail,” is a Wyze lyrical adaption of Carr/Blackwell’s “Christmas in Jail – Ain’t That a Pain,” by Floyd Thompson and J.E. Guernsey, styled to fit perfectly at the conclusion of this excellent album.
“We made this record,” Wyze says, “because Carr and Blackwell made great music – first in our hometown, then
elsewhere – because their music traveled across the country, around the world, and because it still travels and enlivens blues lovers to this day.” The album was recorded in Indianapolis at a downtown studio located just a couple miles from where Carr and Blackwell first recorded in June 1928.
With “Naptown Blues,” Christopher Wyze reminds us of the elegant simplicity of the best blues music, played as it was meant to be heard. His unpretentious, natural feel for the music lends it an authenticity that speaks to its universal appeal, and to our continued enjoyment. Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell created songs worth listening to in 1928. Their contribution to America’s classical music is still vital a century later.
Here’s an interview with Chrisopher Wyze about the genesis of the album, from Essentially Pop
As fate, or the blues, would have it, I had written about Carr and Blackwell’s importance earlier this year. Here’s that post.
Here’s “Naptown Blues” from the album:
Tracklist:
- I’m Going Back to Tennessee – 4:03
- Naptown Blues – 2:54
- How Long – How Long Blues – 4:21
- The Truth About the Thing – 3:12
- My Own Lonesome Blues – 2:51
- Midnight Hour Blues – 3:28
- Kokomo Blues – 3:52
- Tired of Your Low Down Ways – 3:06
- You Got to Reap What You Sow – 3:09
- Prison Bound Blues – 4:39
- Birthday in Jail — 4:06
Here’s the original: