New releases last four weeks: Blues

Review: Scrapper Blackwell's final recordings, laid down in Indianapolis in 1961, marked the return of a blues guitarist and singer who had been silent since the mid-30s. Mr. Scrapper's Blues was released posthumously in 1962, just after Blackwell was shot and killed - a stark coda to a career shaped by both brilliance and misfortune. First out on Prestige's Bluesville sublabel, this stark, unclipped LP finds Blackwell alone at the mic, handling guitar, piano and vocals himself. The South Carolina-born, Indiana-raised musician earned early fame through his trailblazing partnership with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and 30s, before vanishing from music entirely following Carr's death. This 180-gram reissue from Craft revives that late-career spark via an all-analogue mastering by Matthew Lutthan.