Brooks Berry & Scrapper Blackwell, c.1960 source: Front cover of Bluesville BV 1074; photographer: Art Rosenbaum

Brooks Berry b. April 15, 1900 in Sturgis, Union County, Kentucky d. October 1976 in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana services held October 16, 1976 at Stuart Mortuary, 2201 N. Illinois St. buried at New Crown Cemetery, 2101 Churchman Ave. in Indianapolis, IN discography

Brooks Berry & Scrapper Blackwell, c.1960 source: eBay auction of photograph similar to the one used on the front cover of Bluesville BV 1074; photographer: Art Rosenbaum

#	year of release	title / label / notes
1	1963	The Blues of Brooks Berry and Scrapper Blackwell: My Heart Struck Sorrow - My Man Is Studyin' Evil #   @ youtube   @ Spotify - Cold Blooded Murder *   @ Spotify - Blues And Trouble * []   @ Spotify - Sweetest Apple On The Tree *   @ youtube - Sun Burnt All My Cotton * $   @ Spotify - 'Bama Bound #   @ youtube   @ Spotify - Can't Sleep For Dreaming #   @ Spotify - Life Ain't Worth Living #   @ Spotify - Blues Is A Feeling # []   @ Spotify - I've Had My Fun #   @ youtube - How Long #   @ Spotify rec. * December 1959 and # summer 1961 in Indianapolis, IN by Art Rosenbaum; Brooks Berry, voc, $ g; Scrapper Blackwell, g, [] p; prod. by Kenneth S. Goldstein & Art Rosenbaum notes by Art Rosenbaum Bluesville BV/BVLP 1074 (US 1963) = Prestige BV/BVLP 1074 (US 196?) Bluesville Records discography Scrapper Blackwell discography
2	1994	Scrapper Blackwell with Brooks Berry (1959 - 1960) Live at 144 Gallery Indianapolis, Ind., September 20th, 1959 - Introduction By Duncan Schiedt - E Blues (guitar solo) - A Blues (guitar solo) - Cold Blooded Murder (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify - How Long Blues - No. 1 (piano solo) - Untitled Blues #1 (Brooks Berry, voc. g)   @ Spotify - Little Boy Blues - My Heart Struck Sorrow (Brooks Berry, voc)   @ Spotify - Untitled Blues #2 (Brooks Berry, voc, g)   @ Spotify - Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out - You're Down And Out - Untitled Blues #3 (guitar solo) - Shady Lane Blues The Complete 77 Recordings, March 31 & April 14, 1960 - Blues Before Sunrise - Sally-In-The-Alley-Blues - Shady Lane Blues - E Blues (guitar solo) - Goin` To Jail About Her - Soft Blues (guitar solo) - No Good Woman Blues - Leaving You Blues - Blue`n Whistling (guitar solo) - Back Step Blues notes by Bill Weiner Document DOCD-5275 (Austria 1994) Scrapper Blackwell discography
3	1998	The Bluesville Years Volume Ten "Country Roads, Country Days" K.C. Douglas - Wake Up - Working Woman - Broken Heart Alec Seward - Evil Woman Blues - Creepin' Blues Doug Quattlebaum - You Is One Black Rat - Sweet Little Woman Brooks Berry and Scrapper Blackwell - 'Bama Bound [Bluesville BV/BVLP 1074] - Blues And Trouble [Bluesville BV/BVLP 1074] Jesse Fuller - Key To The Highway - Stranger Blues Snooks Eaglin - That's All Right - Well, I Had My Fun (Goin' Down Slow) Henry Townsend - Cairo Is My Baby's Home - I Asked Her If She Loved Me Mercy Dee Walton - Pity And A Shame - Have You Ever Been Out In The Country Shakey Jake - Gimme A Smile - Jake's Cha Cha Arbee Stidham - I'm Tired Of Wandering - You Can't Live In This World By Yourself St. Louis Jimmy - Goin' Down Slow Prestige PRCD-9918-2 (US 1998) Bluesville Records discography
4	11/2007	Art Of Field Recording Vol. 1 50 Years Of Traditional Music Documented By Art Rosenbaum disc 3: - Georgia Bottleneck Blues - Cecil Barfield   @ youtube - Carroll County Blues - Gordon Tanner, Smokey Joe Miller & Uncle John Patterson - Brooks' Blues - Brooks Berry & Scrapper Blackwell - Key To The Highway - Neal Patman & Bill Giles - Red River Blues - J.T. Adams - Nobody's Business - George Childers - Bowles' Blues - Eddie Bowles - Got The Blues So Bad - Cliff Sheats - Guitar Pete's Blues - Guitar Pete Franklin - Peach Orchard Mama - James Yank Rachel & Shirley Griffith - Big Leg Women - James Easley, Guitar Pete Franklin & Raymond Holloway - Leaving Here, Don't Know Where I'm Going - Joe K. Rakestraw & Art Rosenbaum - The Mogul - Neal Patman - Deep Ellum Blues - Buford Boyd & Willard Benson - River Line Blues - Shirley Griffith - Going Down The Road Feeling Bad - Jake Staggers - I Cried All Night Long - Harvie Sims - Maggie Campbell Blues - Shirley Griffith - How Long Blues - Guitar Pete Franklin - "A" Blues - Scrapper Blackwell 4-CD set 96-pp. book Dust-to-Digital DTD-08 (US 11/2007)

Like most present day blues singers, Brooksie Berry has been exposed to many traditions and absorbed varied influences, but the old country blues from the South are the backbone of her singing. She was born in March, 1915, in the country town of Sturgis, near the Ohio River in western Kentucky. As a girl she heard the blues which had drifted up along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from the Mississippi Delta country and recalls that the blues was the only music one could hear, with the exception of some string band dance music, outside of church; the young people would gather on some porch in the evenings and sing blues. Brooks mother taught her to play simple accompaniments on the guitar. When she was in her middle teens Brooks moved up to Indianapolis, where she has lived ever since. She arrived in. Indianapolis during that city's heyday as a blues center; Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell were becoming famous as recording artists and were part of a large group of singers and musicians who could be heard at the house parties and gathering places around Indiana and Northwestern Avenues. Brooks learned the relaxed and ingrating blues that Leroy and his friends sang, blues with "that lonesome touch," as one singer put it, and these blended with the old country blues that she had grown up with, as well as with the very different jazz blues of the twenties that she had learned from the records of singers like Ida Cox and Bessie Smith. Brooks met Scrapper shortly after she moved to Indianapolis and thus began a long though at times stormy friendship that was to end suddenly some fifteen months after the last of the present recordings were made. On October 6, 1962. Scrapper was shot to death in a back alley near his home. Brooks has been, during the four years I have known her, reluctant to sing blues without her friend's sensitive guitar or piano playing behind her; and she will sing less and less now that he is gone. Brooks life has been for the most part unhappy; in recent years most of her family and many of her old friends have died. She finds it hard to make a living-the only employment she can get is occasional housekeeping, or "day work." She has very seldom had the opportunity to earn money by singing. Beset by loneliness and trouble, she remains a patient and unembittered person. Although she sings infrequently one has the feeling that her blues are a safety valve for the pressures of a hard life. Singing blues is for Brooks not a social activity or a performance for others, although it once might have been, but rather a completely internal and personal expression. She sings with her eyes shut, swaying back and forth to her music, apparently unconscious of those around her. It is a deeply moving and often slightly awkward experience to listen to her sing-one sometimes feels that he is intruding or her most private thoughts and feelings. Brooks says that in order to sing the blues, "you have to get to studying about the blues, get the blues on your mind." This is important'-- her own esthetic demands that singing the Blues be a serious thing, that the emotion felt must be intense and completely engulf the singer; then the verses will fall into place and the sense of the song emerge. This is her only criterion for her own singing and for that of others. She will accept any sort of music that seems to have emotional validity 'That Ricky Nelson singing Lonesome Town, well, you can tell that boy's girl friend left him, and he got it on his mind to sing about it." However, she dislikes flamboyant, showy singing "I despise to hear records of the blues with all that whoopin' and hollerin'!" She's aware that she has "a plain, heavy voice," and feels that it serves her purposes well. The blues which Brooks sings were recorded during the summer of 1961, with the exception of numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 on side A. These were recorded on portable equipment in late December, 1959, and their sound quality is poorer than that of the more recent recordings. However, Brooks has not since matched the textual richness and the emotional power of these blues, and it was felt that they had to be included. from Art Rosenbaum's notes to Bluesville BV 1074 (OCRed text courtesy 'Bunker Hill')

Sources: - Karel Bogaert: Blues Lexicon.- Antwerpen (Standaard) 1972, p. 36 - Bob Eagle & Eric S. LeBlanc: Blues - A Regional Experience.- Santa Barbara (Praeger Publishers) 2013, p. 137 - Les Fancourt & Bob McGrath: The Blues Discography 1943 - 1970 (2nd edition).- Vancouver 2012, pp. 37, 47 - Robert Ford: A Blues Bibliography, 2nd Edition (Routledge Music Bibliographies) 2007, pp. 130-131 - Mike Leadbitter & Neil Slaven: Blues Records 1943 to 1970 - A selective discography, Vol. one, A to K.- pp. 84-85 - eBay auctions - diverse internet resources source of left column picture: Front cover of Bluesville BV 1074; photographer: Art Rosenbaum thanks to 'Bunker Hill' for OCRed Art Rosenbaum liner notes (posted at weeniecampbell.com) and to Max Hoeffner and Rob Ford for additional info