Francis “Scrapper” Blackwell was a blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter from South Carolina, who was primarily active during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he did all his early recordings, but re-emerged during the folk-blues boom of the late ‘50s and early ’60s to make further recordings.

He was very much associated with blues pianist and composer Leroy Carr, by whom he was sometimes overshadowed, but this collection mostly focuses on his work released under his own name or variations of it. This 43-track  collection includes releases from 1928 through to 1935 on the Vocalion, Gennett, Champion, Bluebird and Decca labels as Scrapper Blackwell, Francis Blackwell and Frankie Black, including a duet tribute to Leroy Carr with pianist Dot Rice, who appears on some of his other recordings, plus all the titles from his 1960 album Blues Before Sunrise and selected titles from his 1961 album Mr. Scrapper’s Blues.

The collection therefore looks at his career from a different standpoint from many others, highlighting his talents as a distinctive songwriter and performer on noted songs like Kokomo Blues, Trouble Blues” and Hard Time Blues, but also demonstrating how his style and relevance to the blues endured across the decades.

REVIEWS

If Francis Hillman Blackwell's sobriquet was well earned, there was no hint of crude roughness in his playing; his fine single note picking can be heard here across all 26 sides of the 78s in his discography. This handsome package includes a 14-page essay by Paul Watts. What Acrobat has done is craft a well-researched, highly-listenable account of one of the most important artists of the pre-war era. Definitely recommended, particularly with disc one as a starting point. - Gary Blue (Blues & Rhythm May 2021)