“Do blues musicians have an obligation to tell forgotten stories in order for the music to stay alive? I don't really know. It’s not easy making a living as a blues musician, so I can’t fault anyone for not carving out the time and money it takes to tell the stories of those who came before us. What I do know is that I love the blues, and I care deeply about its history.”

Christopher Wyze: Naptown Blues

Tribute to two of Indianapolis' greatest blues pioneers - Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell

The new album by Christopher Wyze & The Tellers, titled Naptown Blues (2026), is a deep tribute to the roots of American blues, released by Big Radio Records. Following the highly successful releases of Stuck in the Mud (2024) and the live-recorded Live in Clarksdale, Wyze returns with his third studio effort, turning his attention to two iconic pioneers of the genre: Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell. Recorded in Indianapolis—the birthplace of the legendary duo—the album bridges the past with the present. Christopher Wyze, a charismatic storyteller who began his career as a writer before stepping onto the stage, delivers a mature artistic statement. Raised in southern Indiana and deeply influenced by the Mississippi Delta, he masterfully blends blues with elements of rock-and-roll, Americana, and country, while always keeping authentic blues expression and his expressive harmonica performances at the core. Naptown Blues is not just a look back at the past, but a living testament that the blues remains one of humanity's most honest storytelling traditions.

(Photo: Christopher Wyze)

On the occasion of the release of his new album Naptown Blues, Christopher Wyze speaks about his philosophy surrounding music—a music that, as he emphasizes, transcends borders and cultures to give voice to universal human emotions such as love, struggle, disappointment, and hope. In the interview that follows, he takes us behind the scenes of creating his new record, shares his deep connection to the legacy of Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, and explains why the blues remains the most honest form of expression to this day.

Interview by Michael Limnios    Archive: Christopher Wyze, 2024 & 2025 Interviews 

Special Thanks: Betsie Brown (Blind Raccoon)

After recording in Muscle Shoals and the Mississippi Delta for your previous works, you decided to return home to Indianapolis (Naptown). How did this geographical and emotional return influence the atmosphere and energy of the new album?

Well, it had tremendous influence. First of all, Naptown was the inspiration for the album. Indianapolis is where Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell lived, met and made their first recordings. It's also where my bandmates Gerry Murphy and John Boyle and I first met, recorded and performed together. And the three of us live here. My own musical journey has been centered around this city, just as Leroy and Scrapper’s were. So there was a strong personal and emotional connection from the beginning.

But, the seed for the album got planted when we recorded How Long-How Long Blues for our Live in Clarksdale album a few years ago. That performance, of Leroy and Scrapper’s most famous song, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, was spur of the moment. I came up with the idea the day before the show, ran through the song a couple of times with the band, and we played it live the next for the show and live recording.

I think we all knew the song was by Leroy and Scrapper, but we didn't know much about them. I certainly didn’t. I vaguely knew Scrapper came from Indianapolis; I'm not even sure I knew Leroy lived here, too. On the drive home from Clarksdale, after the show, recording and filming, Gerry, John and I listened to their music in the car and talked about how amazing those two men were. I think that's where the idea for Naptown Blues really began.

And right from the start of this project, we knew we needed to record it in Naptown – Leroy and Scrapper’s hometown – ours, too. I've recorded in Nashville, Memphis, Muscle Shoals and the Mississippi Delta. But this album had to be recorded in Indianapolis. And doing it here carried an extra weight and importance. Yes, there’s the connection to Leroy and Scrapper. But it’s our home as well. From the first time we walked into the Postal Recording studio, this project felt important, perhaps more important than anything I’ve done in music. Think about it, we were recording the songs of our hometown blues heroes, here in our hometown. That mindset and gravity was with us from the start, and it gave the whole thing a reverence. Recording music is always fun and exciting, but this had an extra gratifying dimension to it. I felt like what we were doing had a bigger purpose. There was more to this than trying to make great music.

“I went to Floral Park Cemetery where Leroy was buried in 1935 and New Crown Cemetery where Scrapper was laid to rest. There’s something powerful about seeing the actual places where these men lived and where their stories unfolded. For me, these guys went from being old bluesmen who recorded nearly 100 years ago, to being real people who lived in the same city where I now live in.” (Photo: Christopher Wyze at the gravesite of Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell)

Naptown Blues is a clear tribute to Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell. What does the work of these two pioneers mean to you personally, and why do you feel their contributions to 1920s and 1930s urban blues need to be heard more today?

Leroy and Scrapper have become a big part of what makes up my personal love, respect and reverence for the blues. At first, I did not know how enormously important these men were in helping blues music get established beyond the South and the Mississippi Delta and to other parts of America and ultimately the world. When people talk about the blues migrating north in the U.S., they usually think of Chicago. And of course that's part of the story. But the music stopped in Indiana, too. You hadLeroy and Scrapper here in Indianapolis, but just an hour east of here was Gennett Records, in Richmond, Indiana. Bluesrecorded major figures in blues and American music genres – Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy, Sleepy John Estes, Georgia Tom, Mississippi Sheiks, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll MortonRoosevelt Sykes and many others. Add in Naptown’s Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell and Indiana deserves a place in the story of blues music in America.

It saddens me that Leroy and Scrapper have become so unfamiliar to so many. They were such important and influential blues musicians of that early recording era. Their career together only lasted about eight years – and in one of those years, they made no recordings. In that short time they recorded roughly 200 sides. Think of it, they began recording in the Roaring Twenties and kept making and selling records through the Great Depression, when the economy had been turned upside down. That's remarkable.

And they weren't obscure performers in their heyday. From what I've been able to find, How Long-How Long Blues sold around a million copies. I've also seen estimates that there were about 12 million record players in America then, and perhaps only 3 million of them in Black households. Leroy and Scrapper were marketed primarily to Black listeners. Their genre was called 'race records' at the time. So, if my numbers are anywhere close to accurate, the popularity of that one record was extraordinary. Today people may know that song without knowing much about the men who made it. But people back then, especially the Black community, knew Leroy and Scrapper. More people should know about them today

That's one reason I wanted to make Naptown Blues. Yes I hope people listen to our album. But my bigger hope is that they'll discover Leroy and Scrapper: their music, their stories and those hundreds of recordings. I want listeners to feel some of the admiration for these two hometown bluesmen that Gerry, John and I feel. They shouldn't be forgotten.

“My hope is that these, plus our new CD and the history booklet that comes with it will inspire people to listen to Leroy and Scrapper’s original recordings and appreciate their lives and contributions to the history of the blues that happened right here in my hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana (Naptown).” (Christopher Wyze / Photo by Zach Stanley, Lit Photography, Indianapolis, Indiana)

For this album, you chose not to use drums or percussion, keeping only the bare essentials, acoustic bass, guitars, harmonica, and your voice. How challenging was it to strip down your sound like this, and how did this choice help capture the authentic soul of the tracks?

It really wasn't that challenging. What I mean is, we didn’t consciously choose to exclude drums or percussion. This wasthree Indianapolis guys who wanted to make this record together – just the three of us. And none of us are drummers. So there you go; no drums.

But it’s more than just three guys who live in the same city making a recording. Gerry, John and I have known one another and performed and recorded together for 10 or 15 years. We communicate so easily when we're making music that we can concentrate on the one job in front of us: delivering the song, whether it's something I've written or something written by Leroy and Scrapper. 

In our trio, each of us sits in his own musical space. There's nooverlap, so the parts fit together. I sing and play harmonica. Gerry, “Murph” as we call him, plays acoustic bass. And JB plays guitars. He also played a bit of Hammond organ on Prison Bound Blues. We didn't talk about who was going to do what. We already know what we do and how we make music together.We know how to listen to one another and at the same time, create. That's why working without drums or percussion didn't feel like stripping anything away. It was just the three of us doing our thing together as we have for many years.

We did a handful of rehearsals. But we deliberately didn't over-rehearse. We wanted the performances to stay fresh. Leroy and Scrapper made live recordings. They had microphones and electric recording, but none of the modern options for multi-track, patching, overdubbing and Pro Tools and so forth. The takes of theirs we can hear today, those were live performances. If something went wrong, they couldn't fix it. They had to start over.

We thought we might be able to do the songs live, but practically speaking, we needed multiple guitars and in one case multiple harmonicas to get the sound we wanted. And there were only three of us. So, I don't want to pretend we recreated their recording process. But we tried to keep that live feeling. The result, I hope, is the sound of three musicians making something together, each putting his heart into it.. We can’t know what the music meant to them, but we do know what it means to us. And in that way I hope we captured the soul of their music

You stated that during the recording you didn't try to mimic Leroy Carr, and John Boyle III did not try to become Scrapper Blackwell. How did you manage to balance absolute respect for the original music with the need to put your own modern stamp on it?

First, I would say we didn't consciously set out to put our stamp on their music. We made sure to stick to the lyrics and form of the songs. And then we performed it the only way we know how. Murph, JB and I each have our own way of playing, so naturally, the songs sound like us. Is that a modern stamp? I suppose it is; we're musicians making music today. But we never sat down with any thought of trying to make Leroy and Scrapper sound a certain way. And no, we weren't trying to impersonate them. I hate to think of what the music would sound like if we all tried to exactly copy what they did.

“Leroy and Scrapper have become a big part of what makes up my personal love, respect and reverence for the blues. At first, I did not know how enormously important these men were in helping blues music get established beyond the South and the Mississippi Delta and to other parts of America and ultimately the world.” (Christopher Wyze / Photo by Zach Stanley, Lit Photography, Indianapolis, Indiana)

You recorded the album at Postal Recording Studio in downtown Indianapolis, very close to the historic spots where Carr and Blackwell made history. Did you feel any kind of spiritual connection or extra responsibility inside the studio during those sessions?

Yes, absolutely. I think we all felt that, an almost spooky, spiritual connection. It was impossible not to feel that, given whose music we recorded and where we recorded it. On our way to the studio for the sessions, we drove near the places where Leroy and Scrapper met and first recorded. Postal Recording itself is roughly five kilometers from the site where they made their first four recordings, including How Long-How Long Blues, their most enduring song. We'd be driving to a session and talking about that history along the way. It got us ready to do our jobs.

And Postal Recording, as the name says, is in an old post office building from the 1930s. Scrapper actually lived not far from there for a time. And it’s possible this very post office may have delivered his mail. Is that crazy? So, between that building and the streets we passed on the way to the sessions, it felt almost as though we were walking back into Leroy and Scrapper’s time in Naptown. Then we'd go into the studio and begin playing the music of these two men who had lived and worked so close by.It “gets” you.

By the time we began recording, we'd spent roughly a year listening to their music, talking about it and learning as much as we could about their lives. So, yes, I felt an extra responsibility, and I think the guys did, too, including Postal engineer Tyler Watkins. These weren't just some random blues songs we'd chosen to cover in some random studio. They were songs made famous by two of the great bluesmen from our own city. And we recorded them in their city. That gave the sessions some extra emotion along with an almost calming peace about what we were undertaking. I hope that comes through when people listen.

Many describe you not just as a blues man, but as a preservationist of musical history. How do you view this role? Do you believe that the blues has an obligation to tell the forgotten stories of the past in order to stay alive?      (Photo: Christopher Wyze)

Well, I’m honored to be thought of as a preservationist, in particular of Leroy and Scrapper. But, you should probably know that before I became a songwriter and recording artist, I was a journalist, a magazine writer, a book author, an advertising writer and an ad agency owner. I've spent more than 40 years writing, and researching has been an important part of most everything I’ve ever written. So digging into Leroy and Scrapper’s music and lives came pretty naturally to me. So yes, I do see my role as more than just recording songs by two great bluesmen.

Almost as soon as we got home from the Live in Clarksdale show and our How Long-How Long Blues recording, I started trying to find out more about Leroy and Scrapper. The more I learned, the more I realized how much I still didn't know. Information about their lives wasn't easy to find. I spent several days at the Indiana Historical Society going through the personal files of Duncan Scheidt, a writer and photographer who worked mostly with jazz musicians and helped bring Scrapper Blackwell back to public attention in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was a big deal. The Smithsonian Museum in Washington has seven thousand of his photos in their archives. So I dug through box after box of his photographs, letters and documents that had belonged to Duncan. In those piles were letters concerning Scrapper's rediscovery and a recording agreement that Scheidt helped arrange with a label in the UK. There was even Scrapper’s original copy of the contract he himself had signed. I held it in my hands! To be able to read those papers, and hold his signature, was extraordinary.

A big thing that struck me in what I’ve been able to find is the contrast between their tremendous success and the sadness of their personal stories. Scrapper said in a 1960 interview that he and Leroy were each paid $4,000 for How Long-How Long Blues in 1928. That was a huge sum at the time. You'd think that kind of success might have set them up for life. But it didn't. Leroy struggled with alcohol, and his death certificate, which I've seen, lists acute alcoholism as the cause of his death. He was just 30 when he died in 1935. Imagine that.

After Leroy died, Scrapper made only a few more recordings and then stopped. One of them, which he wrote, was My Old Pal Blues - Dedicated to the Memory of Leroy Carr. He recorded that in in Chicago with Bumble Bee Slim and Dot Rice. It's a heartbreaking song about the loss of his friend. To my ears, you can hear how deeply Leroy's death affected him. As far as I've been able to find out, Scrapper made very little music, perhaps none, for years afterward, until his rediscovery around 1959. He died in 1962 at age 59. Scrapper’s story, and Leroy’s – they almost seem too improbable to be real. But they were real.

Once I learned these things, I felt wanted to share them. The music on Naptown Blues is one way. Another is the 24-page booklet that comes with the CD. It tells the story of where Leroy and Scrapper were born, how they came to Indianapolis as youngsters, where they lived, how they met and recorded, and what happened to them. It also includes lyrics and recording details of all 11 songs on the album. I wanted people to have a way to learn about the men behind the records, not just hear our interpretations of their songs.

Do blues musicians have an obligation to tell forgotten stories in order for the music to stay alive? I don't really know. It’s not easy making a living as a blues musician, so I can’t fault anyone for not carving out the time and money it takes to tell the stories of those who came before us. What I do know is that I love the blues, and I care deeply about its history. And I know that once I found out what I did about Leroy and Scrapper, I couldn't keep it to myself. I started talking about it to my friends, family, fellow musicians. One thing led to another, and we ended up making this album. We didn’t have time for it, but we all made time for it. It seemed important. It is important. Every blues fan deserves a chance to learn about them. Whatever more I discover, I'll share it.

That same urge to share what I found led me to create a YouTube video series called Leroy & Scrapper’s Naptown. I traveled around Indianapolis with a camera, filming places connected to their lives and deaths. I went to Indiana Avenue, including the site of the Indiana Avenue Music Shop where Leroy and Scrapper met in 1928, the Madame Walker Theater where Leroy performed, and to the Indianapolis Athletic Club building where Carr and Blackwell recorded their first four songs – including How Long-How Long Blues in June of 1928. The building still stands in downtown Indianapolis, and it’s gorgeous. I visited the location of Leroy’s last home on Northwestern Avenue and Scrapper’s apartment on North Capitol Avenue, the place he resided at the time of his death. We also go to some especially sad places: the alley behind 527 West 17th Street where Scrapper was found murdered in 1962. I went to Floral Park Cemetery where Leroy was buried in 1935 and New Crown Cemetery where Scrapper was laid to rest. There’s something powerful about seeing the actual places where these men lived and where their stories unfolded. For me, these guys went from being old bluesmen who recorded nearly 100 years ago, to being real people who lived in the same city where I now live in.

For those who are interested, wherever you are in the world, youtake this same trip, with me – even if they’ve never been to Naptown. People can sign up to get these videos plus new ones we’ll be filming delivered to their email inbox by going to this link and entering their email. There’s no charge for the videos. My hope is that these, plus our new CD and the history booklet that comes with it will inspire people to listen to Leroy and Scrapper’s original recordings and appreciate their lives and contributions to the history of the blues that happened right here in my hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana (Naptown).

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(Photo: Christopher Wyze)