Sharecropper, drummer and exponent of the Delta blues October 7, 2009

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Sharecropper, drummer and exponent of the Delta blues
October 7, 2009
Terence McArdle
The Sidney Morning Herald

Sam Carr, 1926-2009.

SAM CARR was a widely acclaimed drummer who worked with the blues singers Sonny Boy Williamson and Buddy Guy, and led the Delta blues trio the Jelly Roll Kings. Carr and the Kings were regarded as among the last exponents of the music played in Mississippi and Arkansas juke joints - rural taverns that played host to unlicensed gambling as well as music.

Carr used a three-piece drum kit with a snare, bass drum and high-hat cymbal, a minimalist approach that fascinated musicologists. He won the Living Blues magazine critics' award for most outstanding drummer for 12 consecutive years and was featured in film and television documentaries on the Mississippi blues, including Martin Scorsese's The Blues: Feel Like Going Home (2003).

Samuel Lee McCollum was born on April 17, 1926, near Marvell, Arkansas. His father, Robert Lee McCollum, was a blues guitarist who performed and recorded under the name Robert Nighthawk. Carr's name was changed from McCollum after he was adopted by a farming family in Dundee, Mississippi. Carr did not recall meeting his father until the age of seven.

He went to work for his father in his teens, often collecting the cover charge for Nighthawk, and learned to play bass lines behind him on the guitar. He also sharecropped while in Arkansas, leaving for St Louis in 1946 after the plantation owner threatened to kill him because of a dispute over a borrowed mule team.

While in St Louis, Carr formed Little Sam Carr and the Blue Kings, initially playing guitar.

He was largely self-taught on the drums and took ''the back seat'', as he put it, because he could not retain drummers with good timing.

In 1956, Carr teamed up with Frank Frost, a blues singer who played harmonica, piano and guitar. They travelled to Helena, Arkansas, where they backed up the harmonica player Rice Miller, who performed as Sonny Boy Williamson on King Biscuit Time, a live radio show. Carr and Frost also performed as a duo, with Frost on guitar and rack-mounted harmonica.

In 1960, Frost and Carr moved to Mississippi, thinking they would find more work there. Carr went back to sharecropping, but he also continued performing with Frost and the guitarist Big Jack Johnson. Johnson's boss, the owner of a local heating oil company, became the trio's booking agent. He bought them dinner jackets and secured bookings at college fraternities, where they acquired a reputation for showmanship.

An audition with Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records in Memphis, resulted in the Frank Frost album Hey Boss Man! (1962). A song from the album, Jelly Roll King, gave the trio its name. The recording is often cited as a classic of electric juke joint blues.

The group later had a national rhythm-and-blues hit, My Back Scratcher in 1966, also released under Frost's name. The band did not record again until they made the album Rockin' the Juke Joint Down (1979), released under the name the Jelly Roll Kings. Frost and Carr were also featured with the guitarist Ry Cooder on the soundtrack of the movie Crossroads (1986).

After Frost's death in 1999, Carr formed the Delta Jukes with the guitarist Dave Riley and harmonica player John Weston.

He was also featured behind the Chicago guitarist Buddy Guy on the album Sweet Tea (2001).

Carr's wife of 62 years, the former Doris Godfrey, died in 2008.