About Mancy Cara
Hometown
Charleston, WV, United States
Born
1900
Genre
Jazz
This early banjoist and guitarist is best-known for his recordings with Louis Armstrong in the late '20s. With a nickname that sounds like a South African briefly describing his plans to go auto shopping, Peck Carr got his professional start with the excellent bandleader Carroll Dickerson circa 1924. He would climb over to Lottie Hightower's Night Hawks the following year, but must have liked neither the view nor the hours, returning to the Dickerson group and staying for several years. This was where Armstrong comes into the story as a Dickerson collaborator. Carr rolled into New York City along with both of these performers in 1929.
Further parking spots in his career were quite predictable, similar to the actions of other early
string players in jazz bands. He switched from banjo to guitar, but like many of his peers did not get in on the electric lead-guitar revolution credited to Charlie Christian. He left New York and spent some time playing in Chicago, then wound up in West Virginia, where he is reported to have worked in a band with his brother. He faded completely from the type of spotlight afforded to early Armstrong sidemen, to the point where some scholars even lost track of what race he was, a subject of some importance in the minds of certain jazz doctrinaires. References to him as a white musician are not accurate: He was actually an African-American. Biographers also guess at the exact decade of his death, one writer managing to zero in on "many years ago." ~ Eugene Chadbourne
