To many blues enthusiasts, Josh White was a folk revival artist. It's true that the second half of his music career found him based in New York playing to the coffeehouse and cabaret set and hanging out with Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and fellow transplanted blues artists Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. In Chicago during the 1960s, his shirt was unbuttoned to the waist à la Harry Belafonte and his repertoire consisted of folk revival standards such as "Scarlet Ribbons." He was a show business personality - a star renowned for his sexual magnetism and his dramatic vocal presentations. Many listeners were unaware of White's status as a major figure in the Piedmont blues tradition…

The third of three Document CDs that cover Josh White's early years has 16 selections from 1935-1936 and eight from 1940. In between those periods, White suffered a serious injury to a hand that forced him out of music temporarily. The earlier numbers feature him either as "The Singing Christian" or as a blues singer under the name of "Pinewood Tom." Those duets (with either pianist Walter Roland or guitarist Buddy Moss) are excellent including such numbers as "Jet Black Woman," "Got a Key to the Kingdom" and "No More Ball and Chain." The later eight numbers have White accompanied by bassist Wilson Meyers and, on "Careless Love" and "Milk Cow Blues," the great clarinetist Sidney Bechet. Listeners who think of Josh White as primarily an urban folk singer, will find these performances, and those are the preceding two Document CDs, to be quite intriguing.

The second of three Josh White CDs that document the folk singer's early period features him both as a gospel performer (known as "The Singing Christian") and as a blues singer (billed as "Pinewood Tom"). White's guitar playing was quite fluent during this period and he sounds quite authentic in these different idioms. The first two sessions feature him solo and then other selections have Walter Roland, Leroy Carr or Clarence Williams on piano, with two songs adding Scrapper Blackwell on second guitar. Among the better selections are "Welfare Blues," "I Believe I'll Make a Change," "Evil Man Blues," "Black Gal," "Milk Cow Blues" and "Homeless and Hungry Blues."

Josh White, who became famous in the 1940s as an accessible and highly intelligent folk singer, began his career as a blues-oriented vocalist and guitarist. Vol. 1 of his complete early recordings starts with a couple instrumental jams from 1929 with the Carver Boys (a quartet consisting of harmonica and three guitars). The remainder of this CD is from 1932-1933, with White heard on some easy-to-take religious songs and as a blues performer. These 24 recordings are all solo numbers other than two selections that have an unknown pianist added. White's voice is strong, and his guitar playing is quite fluent. Among the better numbers are "Black and Evil Blues," "Things About Coming My Way," "Double Crossing Woman," and "Lay Some Flowers on My Grave." This set is particularly recommended to blues collectors who were not aware of Josh White's musical beginnings.

Meet You In The Morning bounces its way along with Brownie on vocal and guitar with Granville hollering the chorus. Another “rock and roller” that found favour but did not generate sufficient sales. In 1952 he was approached by Dave Miller’s Essex label based in Philadelphia. Essex did not have the resources of Atlantic. They had no house band and no publicity machine. At around this time it is likely that Granville turned to Bob Harris for to play bass with him. He resorted to one of his older compositions and recalled his army days again with a competent and moving performance of No More Reveille. Whiskey Woman and Loaded Dice is simply fun and catchy, the tune being derived from Jimmy Rodger’s version of “In The Jailhouse Now”…

Some 60 years after his passing, Leroy Carr's complete issued recordings were chronologically compiled and released on compact disc by Document Records, Ltd. The sixth and last installment in that exhaustively complete series picks up the trail on December 17, 1934, and follows his remaining Vocalion recordings with a spate of Bluebirds waxed on February 25, 1935. Almost every song heard on this collection moves slowly and deliberately, as if to support an extra load of Weltschmerz. Although "Bread Baker" is a robustly hedonistic hymn to physical pleasures, "It's Too Short" cooks like a boogie, and "Just a Rag" is upbeat, throughout most of this collection Carr's subject matter is far from uplifting…

Vol. 5 in Document's Complete Recorded Works of Leroy Carr focuses upon one of his last great periods of recording activity, from mid-August to mid-December 1934, providing the listener with 19 titles and three alternate takes. In addition to his main man Scrapper Blackwell, Carr is heard with guitarist Josh White on this collection, which is as strong as any other volume in Document's meticulously thorough Leroy Carr retrospective. Most of this music moves at an easy and unhurried pace, which is ideal for expressing simple intimate truths about loneliness, heartbreak, and interpersonal relationships…

People living in the early 21st century would do well to consider complete immersion in more than an hour's worth of vintage Vocalion blues records made during the darkest days of the Great Depression by pianist Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Vol. 4 in Document's Complete Recorded Works of Leroy Carr contains 23 sides dating from March 1932 through August 1934, with three takes of "Mean Mistreatin' Mama" (suffused with a mood that almost certainly inspired Big Maceo's sound) and an extra version of Carr's beautifully straightforward "Blues Before Sunrise." This is not a "get up and shake your butt" kind of collection, and anyone who complains that it isn't has missed the entire point of historic blues appreciation altogether…

During the 1990s, blues legend Leroy Carr's complete recorded works were reissued in chronological sequence by Document Records Ltd. in six volumes with additional test pressings and alternate takes added to an appendix along with ultra-rare sides by Texas piano man Black Boy Shine. While later editions on other labels may boast of improved audio quality, nobody has ever covered Leroy Carr's recorded legacy more thoroughly or comprehensibly. Document's second volume contains all of his originally issued recordings dating from June 7, 1929 to January 2, 1930. Throughout this seven month stretch, Carr delivered his customary assortment of slow blues and ambling reflections, along with half a dozen upbeat boogie and hokum tunes, greatly spurred by the guitar and singing voice of Scrapper Blackwell…

Completists, specialists and academics take note - Document's Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1928-1929) offers an exhaustive overview of Leroy Carr's early recordings. Less dedicated listeners will probably find the long running time, exacting chronological sequencing, poor fidelity (all cuts are transferred from original acetates and 78s), and number of performances a bit off-putting, even though the serious blues listener will find all these factors to be positive.

The six earlier volumes in Austrian reissue label Document Records' series of albums featuring Leadbelly's commercial recordings are given the date range of 1939 to 1947. But this seventh volume runs up to the year of Leadbelly's death, 1949, after having started with a couple of airchecks from a broadcast of the This Is Jazz radio series from June 14, 1947 ("Green Corn" and "John Henry"). These tracks are followed by four recorded for the Library of Congress, and the rest of the album consists of more radio broadcasts or concert performances that were issued on LPs by Folkways Records or, in the case of the last two, "Old Ship of Zion" and "I Will Be So Glad When I Get Home," from Playboy Records' album of one of the singer's last concert at the University of Texas on June 15, 1949…

The Austrian reissue label Document Records released the first five volumes of its series of the commercial recordings of Leadbelly in chronological order in 1994, taking the story up to 1946. Three years later comes the sixth volume, covering recordings made in 1947. Except for the final, barely audible live recording of "Eagle Rock Rag" made on September 6, 1947, these tracks were cut for record company owner Moses Asch (soon to found Folkways), with the discographical information incomplete…

The Austrian Document Records label continues its series of CDs presenting Leadbelly's commercial recordings in chronological order from 1939 with this fifth volume, which picks up at the end of the singer's series of recordings for Capitol Records in Los Angeles in October 1944. Although the next batch of performances (tracks three through 14) come from a live performance for children in San Francisco in February 1945 that was broadcast on the radio, they fit into the "commercial recordings" framework because the tape was later pressed onto a disc by Folkways Records. By June 1946, Leadbelly was back in New York doing informal sessions for Moses Asch, soon to found Folkways, though most of these tracks were issued on its predecessor, Disc Records…

The Austrian Document Records label continues its series of CDs presenting Leadbelly's commercial recordings in chronological order from 1939 with this fourth volume, which picks up with a series of sessions probably held in May 1944 for record company owner Moses Asch and eventually issued on various records by the labels Asch, Stinson, Folkways, and Arhoolie. The singer's contract with Asch was nonexclusive, and while residing on the West Coast later in the year, he recorded for Capitol Records in October, the tracks issued on singles and EPs. Many of Leadbelly's better-known songs are included in these sessions (in many cases as re-recordings), among them "Easy Rider" ("See See Rider"), "Bourgeois Blues," "Rock Island Line," and "Irene" ("Goodnight Irene")…

The Austrian Document Records label continues its series of CDs presenting Leadbelly's commercial recordings in chronological order from 1939 with this second volume, which picks up with the second day of the singer's two days of sessions for RCA Victor Records in June 1940, some of the tracks featuring the Golden Gate Quartet, material issued either on the album The Midnight Special and Other Prison Songs or on singles on the discount-priced Bluebird Records subsidiary. These recordings (tracks one through ten) marked the end of Leadbelly's work for major record labels for the time being…