For those unaware, Naptown Blues is a hometown album: current-day Indianapolis blues musicians returning to the music of two often-forgotten bluesmen from their hometown whose work helped shape American blues.

Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell were not Delta or Chicago bluesmen by origin or identity; they were Indianapolis artists – Naptown artists. They lived most of their lives in Indianapolis. Their musical partnership began in the city. They made their first recordings in Indianapolis. They both met untimely deaths and are buried in Indianapolis. And their songs carried the city’s sounds across the country, around the world and into blues history.

Fresh off recording sessions in Muscle Shoals and the Mississippi Delta, Christopher Wyze & the Tellers jolted onto the global blues scene with Stuck in the Mud – their 13-track debut album of all-original music in 2024.

And now we are gifted their new album, Naptown Blues, one which includes a 24-page booklet that tells the aforementioned story. With this all-new take on their classic, Indianapolis-based bluesmen Christopher Wyze & The Tellers take you on a musical journey to their hometown (and Leroy and Scrapper’s too!)

1. I’m Going Back to Tennessee
2. Naptown Blues
3. How Long - How Long Blues
4. The Truth About the Thing
5. My Own Lonesome Blues
6. Midnight Hour Blues
7. Kokomo Blues
8. Tired of Your Low Down Ways
9. You Got to Reap What You Sow
10. Prison Bound Blues
11. Birthday in Jail

Supremely honoring two major prewar blues artists, the band opens on the languishing beauty of I’m Going Back to Tennessee and the impassioned title track Naptown Blues and they are backed by the soulful How Long - How Long Blues, the emotively jaunty The Truth About the Thing and the gently strident fare of My Own Lonesome Blues.

Along next on this 11-track, stripped-down acoustic tribute to the historic 1929 recordings of these Indianapolis blues pioneers is the affectional Midnight Hour Blues (which has been covered by notables such as Eric Clapton, John Hammond Jr. and Charlie Musselwhite, et al.) and the rhythmically magical Kokomo Blues, and they are in turn followed by the melodious Tired of Your Low Down Ways, the set rounding out on the harmonica-fueled You Got to Reap What You Sow, the low key, front porch, sunset-hued cut Prison Bound Blues, coming to a close on the all-embracing ambiance of the day within Birthday in Jail.

Leroy Carr moved from Tennessee to Indianapolis in childhood. He lived here until his death in 1935. Francis Hillman “Scrapper” Blackwell moved to the city as a small child and also made the city his lifelong home, until his passing in 1962.

Christopher Wyze and the Tellers | Naptown Blues [Official Music]

www.christopherwyzeandthetellers.com

Christopher Wyze & The Tellers @ Facebook