Hanging with Sam Carr - Lula, MS
You have to head south on Highway 61 out of Memphis to get there. Past the cypress trees and those new man-made ones that are growing worse than weeds along the side of the road; billboards advertising the recently built gambling casinos. But once you pass all of that, there's no mistaking where you are - The Mississippi Delta, home of the Delta Blues.
Lula is not unlike many of those small delta towns that have grown along the Mississippi River. A few blocks is all, half a dozen brick buildings and perhaps twice as many small shacks. Oh, and one other thing; the town's one stop sign srtategically placed at the only intersection in town.
At the Lula grocery I happened upon five elderly gentlemen sitting in front of the store, just quietly passing some time. I've found folks in the Delta to be very cordial and friendly, courteous, polite and willing to help out any stranger that's friendly toward them. These men were no different.
Lula is not unlike many of those small delta towns that have grown along the Mississippi River. A few blocks is all, half a dozen brick buildings and perhaps twice as many small shacks. Oh, and one other thing; the town's one stop sign srtategically placed at the only intersection in town.
At the Lula grocery I happened upon five elderly gentlemen sitting in front of the store, just quietly passing some time. I've found folks in the Delta to be very cordial and friendly, courteous, polite and willing to help out any stranger that's friendly toward them. These men were no different.
So after we got to talking about the weather and things that strangers do to warm up a conversation, I asked them if they knew of any musicians in the area.
"Sure, one of them said. You ever hear of Sam Carr?
"The drummer? I asked.
"Yessir. He lives just up on Highway 49 in a green house sitting all by itself in a field with these cars all around it. You can't miss it."
"How do I get there? I asked.
"Well, go on down the road past that old gas station"
"Past the lumber yard"
"Keep going and you'll see this old juke"
"Keep going and pass over the freight tracks"
"And get out on 49. You'll see his house sitting out there by itself"
So I did and sure enough there was a house out in the middle of a field, with a bunch of cars parked near it, just like the gentleman said. Said I couldn't miss it, and by golly I sure didn't.
If that weren't enough proof, the Carr mailbox was all the proof I needed:
So I got out of my car, went up to the porch and knocked on the screen door. Sam, just like his neighbors in town was friendly and actually pleased as punch to have a visitor that day. After a while we started talking about his days as a musician.
You might say that Sam Carr was born to play music. His father, famous blues musician Robert Nighthawk, used to bring little 8 year old Sammy along to his gigs, where Sam would dance and prance in front of the stage along to the beat of the music. That was around 1932, during the Great Depression, when most all people had back then was their music. Sam picked up the guitar at first, but soon switched over to drums. In the years that followed he teamed up with harmonica/guitarist Frank Frost and for over a decade played some of the best blues that has ever come out of the Delta.
Sam - "I started out on the guitar. I was playing with a man called 'Treetop' who blew the harp. We was playin' for wine in those days, and sometimes for whiskey, 'bout 35 cents a pint. We used to get paid 3 dollars apiece for the night, and we packed 'em in. I was playing this on the guitar."
At this point Sam picked up an old hollow body electric guitar and played a shuffle on the bass strings.
Sam - "I couldn't play no lead, I couldn't touch that no kinda way, but you couldn't beat me on the bass notes. We played all kinda parties. Every drummer we had they just quit. See, me and Treetop we were gettin the credit and the drummer wasn't, so I think they got jealous."
"So I said, I know how the drums go cause I used to slip right in and play my daddy's set you see. I learned myself. I said, 'I wanna be what I wanna be, and I wanna be a drummer. See, I could see the parts other drummers was doing wrong and I said uh, uh, I could beat that."
"Now I couldn't play fast the way other guys play so I said 'Well, allright, I go another way. I can't do what he does but he can't do what I do neither.' That way I came to my own style. I could tap dance on those drums, other guys did rolls but they couldn't touch what I was doing. Soon everybody was braggin on me playing those drums. "
