The term urban blues is usually applied to post-World War II blues band music, but one of the forefathers of the genre in its pre-electric format was singer-pianist Leroy Carr (born March 27, 1905, in Nashville, Tennessee). Teamed with the exemplary guitarist Scrapper Blackwell in Indianapolis, Carr became one of the top blues stars of his day, and most of the most influential of all time, although he lived only until the age of 30. Carr composed and recorded almost 200 sides during a seven-year recording career, including such classics as How Long, How Long, Prison Bound Blues, When the Sun Goes Down, and Blues Before Sunrise. His blues was expressive and evocative, recorded only with piano and guitar, yet as author Sam Charters has noted, he was ‘a city man’ whose singing was never as rough or intense as the country bluesmen’s; and as reissue producer Francis Smith put it, ‘he, perhaps more than any other single artist, was responsible for transforming the rural blues patterns of the 1920s into the more city-oriented blues of the 1930s.’ He died in Indianapolis on April 29, 1935
— Jim O’Neal
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