“Melody is the essence of music.”

   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)

The trailhead.

Leroy Carr (1904-1935) – singer, pianist, songwriter, performer and recording artist – was one of the most prolific, popular and influential Blues musicians of the 1930’s.

Leroy and his musical partner, guitarist Francis Hillman “Scrapper” Blackwell (1903-1962)…

…cut their first record, “How Long – How Long Blues,” on June 19, 1928 for Vocalion Records.

Released in early August, 1928, the song’s immediate popularity sent the Indianapolis, Indiana-based duo back into the recording studio where, on August 14, they recorded six new songs including a Carr original called “You Got To Reap What You Sow.”

“You Got To Reap What You Sow” is in the key of A-flat major and in 4/4 time. Its melody is built out of seven short phrases and is eight measures long. Lyrically, there are six verses set to this melody, each concluding with the line: “But you got to reap / just what / what you sow.”

Give a listen!

“You Got To Reap What You Sow” b/w “Truthful Blues” was Carr and Blackwell’s fourth release on the Vocalion label.

BTW: This song has no relationship at all with the similarly-titled “You Shall Reap Just What You Sow” – a song written by Alexander Robinson (1894-1970) and recorded by vocalist Alberta Hunter (1895-1984) in 1923.

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The journey begins: the first cover.

Hudson “Tampa Red” Whittaker (1903-1981) – aka “The Guitar Wizard” – was a Chicago-based Blues singer, songwriter, kazoo player and slide guitarist whose recording career also started in 1928.

Tampa Red’s first big hit was “It’s Tight Like That,” co-written and recorded (on October 24, 1928) with pianist Thomas A. “Georgia Tom” Dorsey (1899-1993). The record is estimated to have eventually sold over seven million copies.

Tampa Red frequently showcased his distinctive and stunning slide guitar skills on solo instrumental recordings. An early one of those was his June 22, 1929 cover of Leroy Carr’s “You Got To Reap What You Sow.”

On this recording, Tampa Red plays a National steel-bodied resonator guitar in Open D tuning. He reportedly used a short, glass “bottleneck” slide worn on the pinky finger of his left hand. After a brief fingerpicked introduction, he plays the melody – just the melody – adding a bass note or two, a strummed bit of a chord, to fill in the spaces between each of the phrases and rhythmically complete the eight measures of Carr’s composition.

Then Tampa Red plays it all again, and again; a total of ten times – each time slightly but brilliantly different in articulation and timing.  

Listen for yourself!

Tampa Red’s recording career extended into the 1960’s, but the bulk of his recordings were made between 1928 and 1953. Document Records needed 15 volumes to gather all of those recordings together for their CD series: “Tampa Red: In Chronological Order.”

Coming up in Part 2: Rising to a higher elevation.