Search - Leroy Carr :: Hurry Down Sunshine

His voice blessed with a plaintive charm perfectly suited to his fluid piano style, Leroy Carr was one of the most beloved of country blues singers. The songs he wrote (with his sister Mae) were carefully composed, possessing a rare and simple poetry, most notably "Midnight Hour Blues," "How Long Has the Evening Train Been Gone," "Blues Before Sunrise," and the exceedingly popular "How Long, How Long Blues." In 1928, Carr befriended the gifted guitarist Francis "Scrapper" Blackwell, and together they began an extraordinary series of recordings, as well as a skein of personal appearances from Nashville to Chicago to St. Louis, that would be interrupted only by cruel fate. At an all-night party in 1935, the heavy-drinking Carr was felled by acute nephritis, and was dead by dawn. His funeral, a spontaneous cultural event, was attended by thousands of African Americans grieving for the most charismatic bluesman of the day. --Alan Greenberg