Bo Carter

Complete recorded Works c. November/December 1928 – 12 February 1940

Vol. 4: 20th February 1936 to 22nd October 1938

Bo Carter, vocal guitar.

Genres: Country Blues, Mississippi Blues, Country Blues Guitar, National Guitar

Abridged from this album’s original booklet notes. It has taken quite some time for Bo Carter‘s rightful place in blues history to be established. His music was complicated and multifaceted. The question of whether his lyrics are “pornographic” or merely an uninhibited and even healthy view of sexuality is really a relative one. There is certainly enough “raw” data contained in Bo Carter – Vol. 4 for the listener to come to his own conclusion. All Around Man, It’s Too Wet, Cigarette Blues, Your Biscuits Are Big Enough For Me, and Don’t Mash My Digger So Deep are classics of their type and the gorgeous guitar work on Cigarette Blues alone should be enough to persuade even the casual listener that there is more here than suggestive wordplay. Beginning with the February 1936 session all of the remaining titles Bo Carter was to record were finger picked on his National resonator guitar. He sometimes returned to earlier material that he would previously have played with a plectrum, but now it was played with a steady thumb or alternating bass pattern. He remade “Ants In My Pants” (itself a version of “Sitting On Top Of The World”) as Flea On Me, and the standards “Trouble In Mind” (as Trouble In Blues) and “My Monday Woman” (as A Girl For Every Day Of The Week). The session in San Antonio in October 1938 produced more songs than he had ever recorded at one sitting, including some of his most interesting pieces. Without a doubt, Bo Carter was at his peak.

DOCD-5081