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He was Francis Hillman Blackwell but thanks to his grandmother it was Scrapper pretty much all of

his life. “That’s what they call me,” he said “nobody know me by my name.”

Part Cherokee Indian and one of sixteen kids, Scrapper was three years old when the whole family
moved to industrial Indianapolis from Syracuse, South Carolina. His father was a fiddle player so
Scrapper spent his childhood pretty much surrounded by music, everyone in the family played some
musical instrument or other and Scrapper joined in, building himself a guitar out of a mandolin neck
and a cigar box.

His first real guitar cost seven dollars, bought with the take-out of a crap game, and Scrapper set
about learning himself to play that thing. “Know who
learned me? Nobody, it just come to me.”

Well, Scrapper must have learned himself real good,
cause by the time he was teenage he was cutting his

teeth round those wild bawdy houses and juke joints
of downtown Indiana Avenue, although most of his
money came from alky cooking. “I was selling my corn,
I was making money” reckoned Scrapper, trouble was
that moonshine also earned him a spell on the penal
farm.

When he got back to Naptown he latched onto the
shadowy figure of Mr Guernsey an English storekeeper
who wanted to break into the record business, “fine
fellow” reckoned Scrapper.

Guernsey, who had already met talented 88’s player
Leroy Carr, wangled a meeting between Carr and Blackwell. “Leroy got down and played the blues

pretty good” remembered Scrapper “I said that sounded good, I kinda liked that myself.”

Blackwell could be hot tempered, and tough to work with but him and Leroy blended like fine corn
whiskey. There was a real buzz round Scrapper’s jazzy Piedmont picking and Carr’s Hoosier piano
and their very first recording together “How Long How Long Blues” hit the spot, selling quicker than
the best hooch in town.

For the next seven years, Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell’s platters sold big. Their tight catchy
style made them red hot stars on the blues circuit and one of the few acts making money through

those depression years. “I left a lot of money under different pillows” recalled Scrapper. From time
to time they’d head off alone to record and perform, although neither of them quite lit that fire on
their own.

Problem was that while Scrapper wrote a whole bunch of their songs and his fine jazzy guitar licks
lifted every track, the spotlight always seemed to shine on the tall, smooth, well dressed city dude,
Carr. Scrapper didn’t care too much about that, he was living a wild booze soaked life, but he did care

about the lack of credit and recognition for the songs he wrote and the royalties he reckoned he
deserved.

Things finally blew up when a well-oiled and moody Scrapper got thrown out of a studio session after
another drunken row over money. Leroy Carr, already ill and drinking too heavily himself took on
one corn whiskey too many and was found dead in his bed.