BO CARTER — The Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order ★ Volume 2 • 1931-1934 | DOCD-5079 (1991) RM | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

22 songs (with three still missing) cut by Carter, solo with guitar or with Lonnie Chatmon on fiddle, over a three-year period. Document has had unusual luck with the quality on this release, as there's relatively little surface noise on much of it. This helps bring out the richness, dexterity, and playfulness of Carter's playing, as well as the expressiveness of his voice in extraordinary detail. Perhaps the most surprising element of these sides are the two unissued Okeh tracks from 1931, "The Law Is Gonna Step On You" and "Pig Meat Is What I Crave," which are the equal of anything that the label did put out from those same sessions, and show Carter's playing to great advantage and in extraordinarily high-quality sound. His music was probably closest in spirit to the early work of Tampa Red and Georgia Tom Dorsey, with its mixture of double-entendre lyrics and hokum influences. The three-year gap in Carter's recordings, caused by the crunch that hit the blues business with the Great Depression, show him re-emerging at the end (for Bluebird) with a more sophisticated sound, less stripped-down than his early sides but just as playful in its risqué way ("Banana In Your Fruit Basket," etc.).  Bruce Eder

Abridged from this album’s original booklet notes Bo Carter was still touring the South with the Mississippi Sheiks in the years 1930 through 1935. This activity took the band through Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, and as far north as Illinois and New York. During this period Bo’s eyesight got progressively worse and he eventually went blind sometime in the 1930s. This ensuing blindness and the disbanding of the Sheiks led Carter to concentrate on his solo recordings. On October 22, 1938 he had his longest session ever, recording eighteen titles in one day, all but one of them issued. This session produced some of his most advanced music from a structural and harmonic standpoint. Let’s Get Drunk Again and Some Day contained some ordinary blues and rag chord progressions structurally utilized in a manner suggesting pop music, and yet the finger picking approach was firmly in the blues mode with some stunning blues riffing in between verses. Both songs also had interesting harmonic bridges that further removed them from mainstream blues. There are also delightfully archaic pieces like Old Devil, taken at a manic pace, and Be My Salty Dog with its suggestion of John Hurt‘s “Candy Man Blues” and Willie Brown‘s “Future Blues” in the figure played in between verses on the bass strings of the guitar. Bo Carter was a veritable encyclopedia of Mississippi blues styles, and then some. At his last session cut in Atlanta on February 12, 1940 he recorded fourteen tracks with twelve being issued. There was less of a divergence from straight blues at this session, but Bo Carter still knew how to put an original stamp on any blues he recorded. Border Of New Mexico Blues is a version of “Kokomo Blues” first recorded by Madlyn Davis as “Kokola Blues” (a mistitling by Paramount) in 1927, and popularized by Kokomo Arnold as “Old Original Kokomo Blues”, and Robert Johnson as “Sweet Home Chicago”. He finished the date with Honey and What You Want Your Daddy To Do?, two eccentric tracks somewhat similar to Some Day (recorded at the previous session). DOCD-5079

Tracklist :
1        So Long, Baby, So Long (A) 3:09
2        The Law Gonna Step On You    (A) 2:41
3        Pig Meat Is What I Crave (A) 2:48
4        Howling Tom Cat Blues (A) 2:47
5        Ants In My Pants (A) 2:53
6        Blue Runner Blues (A) 2:56
7        I've Got A Case Of Mashin' It (B) 3:03
8        You Don't Love Me No More     (B) 3:10
9        What Kind Of Scent Is This? (B) 3:23
10        Pretty Baby (C) 3:02
11        I Want You To Know (C) 3:00
12        Last Go Round (C) 3:06
13        I Keep On Spending My Change (C) 3:10
14        Baby, How Can It Be? (C) 3:28
15        Bo Carter Special (D) 3:03
16        Beans (D) 2:51
17        Nobody's Business (D)     2:57
18        Queen Bee (D) 3:07
19        Tellin' You 'Bout It (D) 2:38
20        Please Don't Drive Me From Your Door (D) 3:01
21        Pin In Your Cushion (D) 2:54
22        Banana In The Fruit Basket (D) 2:52