Little Brother Montgomery with Jeanne Carroll No Special Rider GCD 9913 Buy this CD for $14.00 See film of Little Brother Montgomery and Jeanne Carroll here.

Songlist: 1. No Special Rider 2. Prisoner Bound Blues 3. You Gotta See Your Mama Every Night 4. Cow Cow Blues 5. Gin House Blues 6. New Vicksburg Blues 7. London Shout 8. Oh, Daddy 9. Little Brother’s Early Pieces and History 10. No Special Boogie 11. Farrish Street Jive 12. Muleface Blues

Eurreal Montgomery, the youngest of nine musical siblings, was born into his father’s Louisiana barrelhouse in 1906. Growing up among the hard working and harder playing residents of the Kent Lumber Company, Little Brother quickly acquired the basics of crowd pleasing entertainment, before hitting the road at age 11. From New Orleans to Chicago, he expanded his blues and jazz repertoire during the fertile 1920s, accompanying artists Tommy Johnson, the Chatmon Brothers (Mississippi Sheiks) and numerous Dixieland bands. His recording career, which began in 1930 with Vicksburg Blues and No Special Rider, continued through the plugged-in heyday of Chicago during the 50s and until his death in the mid-1980s.

For the sessions which make up this volume of the Blues Vault Series,™ Adelphi Records set up a recording studio in Little Brother’s Chicago home on September 1, 1969. Vocalist Jeanne Carroll joined the session, adding her elegant, jazz-tinged tone to Brother’s classic New Vicksburg Blues, as well as to songs from the first ladies of the blues--Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

With modest coaxing from a small, enthusiastic audience, Little Brother Montgomery delivers a virtuoso history of Black American music for the listener. Seldom have we traveled the length of the blues highway with one of its principal pioneers as guide.

AMG EXPERT REVIEW: Barrelhouse piano player Eurreal "Little Brother" Montgomery played boogie from the crowds as a touring, pre-teen performer. Also a vocalist, Montgomery began his half-century of recording in the Depression with such songs of loss as "Vicksburg Blues" and "No Special Rider." On these 1969 recordings, rich, full-throated Jeanne Carroll ("Penny Pinching Blues") appears on four of the 12 tracks. She carefully enunciates her way through a rendition of Ma Rainey's "You Gotta See Your Mama Every Night." The excellent blues vocalist and pianist Little Brother Montgomery, an influence to Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, and Skip James, here guides us from his home through the tradition of classic early, post-ragtime piano blues. — Tom Schulte