SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2019
VOLUME SIX NUMBER THREE
ANTHONY BRAXTON
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
ISAAC HAYES
(December 29—January 4)
THOM BELL
(January 5-11)
THE STYLISTICS
(January 12-18)
THE O’JAYS
(January 19-25)
OTIS REDDING
(January 26-February 1)
BOOKER T. JONES
(February 2-8)
THE STAPLE SINGERS
(February 9-15)
OTIS RUSH
(February 16-22)
ERROLL GARNER
(February 23-March 1)
EARL HINES
(March 2-8)
BO DIDDLEY
(March 9-15)
BIG BILL BROONZY
(March 16-22)
Big Bill Broonzy was born William Lee Conley Broonzy in the tiny town of Scott, Mississippi, just across the river from Arkansas. During his childhood, Broonzy's family -- itinerant sharecroppers and the descendants of ex-slaves -- moved to Pine Bluff to work the fields there. Broonzy learned to play a cigar box fiddle from his uncle, and as a teenager, he played violin in local churches, at community dances, and in a country string band. During World War I, Broonzy enlisted in the U.S. Army, and in 1920 he moved to Chicago and worked in the factories for several years. In 1924 he met Papa Charlie Jackson, a New Orleans native and pioneer blues recording artist for Paramount. Jackson took Broonzy under his wing, taught him guitar, and used him as an accompanist. Broonzy's entire first session at Paramount in 1926 was rejected, but he returned in November 1927 and succeeded in getting his first record, House Rent Stomp, onto Paramount wax. As one of his early records came out with the garbled moniker of Big Bill Broomsley, he decided to shorten his recording name to Big Bill, and this served as his handle on records until after the second World War. Among aliases used for Big Bill on his early releases were Big Bill Johnson, Sammy Sampson, and Slim Hunter.
Broonzy's earliest records do not demonstrate real promise, but this would soon change. In 1930, the Hokum Boys broke up, and Georgia Tom Dorsey decided to keep the act going by bringing in Big Bill and guitarist Frank Brasswell to replace Tampa Red, billing themselves as "the Famous Hokum Boys." With Georgia Tom and Brasswell, Broonzy hit his stride and penned his first great blues original, "I Can't Be Satisfied." This was a hit and helped make his name with record companies. Although only half-a-dozen blues artists made any records during 1932, the worst year in the history of the record business, one of them was Big Bill, who made 20 issued sides that year.
Through Georgia Tom and Tampa Red, Big Bill met Memphis Minnie and toured as her second guitarist in the early '30s, but apparently did not record with her. When he did resume recording in March 1934 it was for Bluebird's newly established Chicago studio under the direction of Lester Melrose. Melrose liked Broonzy's style, and before long, Big Bill would begin working as Melrose's unofficial second-in-command, auditioning artists, matching numbers to performers, booking sessions, and providing backup support to other musicians. He played on literally hundreds of records for Bluebird in the late '30s and into the '40s, including those made by his half-brother, Washboard Sam, Peter Chatman (aka Memphis Slim), John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, and others. With Melrose, Broonzy helped develop the "Bluebird beat," connoting a type of popular blues record that incorporated trap drums and upright string bass. This was the precursor of the "Maxwell Street sound" or "postwar Chicago blues," and helped to redefine the music in a format that would prove popular in the cities. Ironically, while Broonzy was doing all this work for Melrose at Bluebird, his own recordings as singer were primarily made for ARC, and later Columbia's subsidiary Okeh. This was his greatest period, and during this time Broonzy wrote and recorded such songs as "Key to the Highway," "W.P.A. Blues," "All by Myself," and "Unemployment Stomp." For other artists, Broonzy wrote songs such as "Diggin' My Potatoes." All told, Big Bill Broonzy had a hand in creating more than 100 original songs.
When promoter John Hammond sought a traditional blues singer to perform at one of his Spirituals to Swing concerts held at Carnegie Hall in New York City, he was looking for Robert Johnson to foot the bill. Hammond learned that Johnson had recently died, and as a result, Big Bill got the nod to appear at Carnegie Hall on February 5, 1939. This appearance was very well received, and earned Broonzy a role in George Seldes' 1939 film Swingin' the Dream alongside Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. In the early '40s, Big Bill appeared at the Café Society, the Village Vanguard, and the Apollo Theater, in addition to touring with Lil Greenwood, all of which kept Big Bill busy during the AFM recording ban. By the mid- to late '40s, the operation in Chicago with Melrose had finally begun to wind down, just as electric blues started to heat up. Big Bill continued to record for labels ranging from majors Columbia and Mercury to fly-by-nights such as Hub and RPM. In 1949, Broonzy decided to take some time off from music, and got a job working as a janitor at the Iowa State University of Science & Technology in Ames.
In 1951 Broonzy was sought out by DJ and writer Studs Terkel and appeared in the latter's concert series I Come for to Sing. Suddenly, Broonzy started to get a lot of press attention, and by September of that year, he was in Paris recording for French Vogue. On this occasion Broonzy was finally able to wax his tune "Black, Brown and White," a song about race relations that had been in his book for years, but every record company he had ever sung it for had turned it down. In Europe, Broonzy proved incredibly popular, more so than at any time in the United States. Two separate documentary films were made on his life, in France and Belgium, respectively, and from 1951 until ill health finally put him out of the running in the fall of 1957, Broonzy nearly doubled his own 1927-1949 output in terms of new recordings.
Broonzy updated his act by adding traditional folk songs to his set, along the lines of what Josh White and Leadbelly had done in then-recent times. He took a tremendous amount of flak for doing so, as blues purists condemned Broonzy for turning his back on traditional blues style in order to concoct shows that were appealing to white tastes. But this misses the point of his whole life's work: Broonzy was always about popularizing blues, and he was the main pioneer in the entrepreneurial spirit as it applies to the field. His songwriting, producing, and work as a go-between with Lester Melrose is exactly the sort of thing that Willie Dixon would do with Chess in the '50s. This was the part of his career that Broonzy himself valued most highly, and his latter-day fame and popularity were a just reward for a life spent working so hard on behalf of his given discipline and fellow musicians. It would be a short reward, though; just about the time the autobiography he had written with Yannick Bruynoghe, Big Bill Blues, appeared in 1955, he learned he had throat cancer. Big Bill Broonzy died at age 65 in August, 1958, and left a recorded legacy which, in sheer size and depth, well exceeds that of any blues artist born on his side of the year 1900.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/bigbillbroonzy
Although William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy achieved fame and success in the Chicago blues scene and the folk revival in the United States and abroad, some of his earliest encounters with the blues and his earliest experiences as a performer and song writer were in Arkansas. Born in Scott, Mississippi, on June, 26 1893, to Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher, Big Bill Broonzy was one of seventeen children. Broonzy soon moved with his family to the Pine Bluff area (Jefferson County), where he spent most of his childhood years. He began performing music at an early age, playing for social and church events on the fiddle, which he learned from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. In addition to odd jobs as a musician, Broonzy also served briefly as a pastor in the Pine Bluff area before 1918.
Between the years 1917 and 1919, Broonzy served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Europe. After his discharge in 1919, Broonzy returned to Arkansas for a brief time, playing in clubs around the Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Pine Bluff areas. In the early 1920s, Broonzy moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he switched instruments to the guitar, taught to him by Papa Charlie Jackson, and began a prolific recording career under the Paramount, Columbia, Bluebird, Okeh, and Chess record labels. Examples of his recording career can be found on numerous compilations. The most comprehensive collection is the twelve-volume anthology of “The Complete Works of Big Bill Broonzy,” which was produced by Document Records beginning in 1994.
Influenced by musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Broonzy developed an amalgamated form of the blues. By combining ragtime and hokum blues with country blues, he created a style that foreshadowed the post�”World War II Chicago sound, which was later defined by such artists as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.
In 1938, Broonzy filled in for Robert Johnson, who had died unexpectedly, at the Spirituals to Swing Concert produced by John Hammond at Carnegie Hall. The fame achieved from this event and a follow-up concert in 1939 established Broonzy as a key figure in the Chicago blues scene. While in Chicago, Broonzy recorded more than three hundred songs and remained a popular and well-respected artist throughout the 1940s. His prolific musical output is evident from his fruitful solo career and his collaborations with other artists, such as Sonny Boy Williamson and Brownie McGhee.
With the rise of electric blues in the early 1950s, Broonzy became an active supporter of the folk blues genre. He played a Martin model 00028, a beautiful instrument. Bill played one of these from the 1950s to his death in 1958. In 1951, Broonzy took his first tour of Europe, where he was met with enthusiasm and appreciation. His appearances in Europe introduced the blues to European audiences and were especially influential in London’s emerging skiffle and rock blues scene. Broonzy’s success also set the stage for later blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II and Muddy Waters to play European venues. Broonzy toured Europe again in 1955 and 1957.
Broonzy’s autobiography, Big Hill Blues, was published with the aid of Danish writer Yannick Bruynoghe in 1955. Shortly after his final tour in 1957, Broonzy was diagnosed with throat and lung cancer. He continued to perform until his death on August 14, 1958, in Chicago. Broonzy was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980.
Source: James Nadal
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
From member station WCPN, David C. Barnett has the story of a performer who survived by constantly reinventing himself.
DAVID C: The man who came to be known as Big Bill Broonzy arrived in Chicago sometime in the early 1920s, playing acoustic country blues.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: Musician Billy Boy Arnold was a teenager when he first saw Broonzy at a club, two decades later.
BILLY ARNOLD: This big giant of a guy came in the doorway with a guitar in his hand.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARNOLD: And he was muscular - he wasn't fat. Black as midnight, you know, and drank and, you know, and seemed to be a very jolly guy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LOVE MY WHISKEY")
BIG BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) I love my whiskey, and I got a quarter right here in my hand...
BARNETT: Broonzy became the king of the Chicago blues scene but the king was about to lose his crown.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: A younger generation of blues performers was starting to pack audiences into South Side clubs. Billy Arnold says everything changed in 1950 with the release of Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROLLIN' STONE")
MUDDY WATERS: (Singing) I went to my baby's house, and I sit down, oh, on her steps...
ARNOLD: It was real powerful and as lowdown as you could get. And the people really liked that 'cause that's what they feel in they heart, see?
BARNETT: So, Big Bill Broonzy changed his musical direction. Chicago was home to a growing folk scene, fueled by young, white intellectuals. It was a time when performers were using music as a tool for social change, and Broonzy was inspired to write what would become one of his most memorable songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLACK, BROWN AND WHITE BLUES")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) This little song that I'm singing about, people you all know it's true. If you're black and gotta work for a living, now this is what they will say to you. They says, if you's white, you're alright. If you's brown, stick around. But if you's black, oh brother, get back, get back, get back.
BARNETT: Billy Arnold wasn't very fond of his old friend's new direction.
ARNOLD: I didn't like the folk stuff he was doing. And he didn't play that Jimmy Crack Corn in no black clubs, 'cause that wouldn't have went over no kind of way.
BARNETT: Broonzy biographer Bob Riesman thinks that the singer's new focus was just a demonstration of his versatility and his instinct for survival.
BOB RIESMAN: I don't think he would have seen that as compromising his integrity in any way. He was a working musician.
BARNETT: But Broonzy changed more than his musical style. Throughout his life, the singer also altered parts of his personal history.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: During a lengthy recording session in 1957, he told some compelling stories about his childhood in rural Mississippi and about the roots of his music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: My mother was a slave, my father was a slave, and I'm just going by what I got from them about different songs.
BARNETT: But Bob Riesman says the singer didn't really come from Mississippi, his parents were not slaves and his name wasn't Broonzy.
RIESMAN: It turned out that he was Lee Bradley of Jefferson County, Arkansas, about 60 miles or so southeast of Little Rock.
BARNETT: After 10 years of research, Riesman says he's come to reconcile the facts of Broonzy's life with the stories he told.
RIESMAN: He treated his life story as a set of fluid possibilities, as opposed to fixed events. And his imaginative powers were formidable. As Studs Terkel said, Bill is telling the truth - his truth.
BARNETT: By the mid-1950s, Bill Broonzy was captivating audiences across the U.S. and Europe with his songs and stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: But his newfound success wouldn't last much longer. The singer's health started to deteriorate...
(SOUNDBITE OF COUGHING)
BARNETT: ...due to a cancer that was spreading through his lungs.
STUDS TERKEL: Bill, you want to hear how this sounds?
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: Yeah, I did, yeah, if it ain't too horrible.
BARNETT: Chicago radio personality Studs Terkel oversaw Broonzy's final recording session, which had been set up by a Cleveland disc jockey. Bill Randle was nationally famous as a pop music hit-maker, having boosted the careers of the Crew Cuts and Pat Boone. In a 1999 interview, the late Randle said financing the Broonzy sessions was partially an act of penitence.
BILL RANDLE: In the course of it, I guess I developed what you would call a cultural guilt complex. And also I had the money. So, I decided that I would just do some things that I thought should be done, and one of them was to record Big Bill Broonzy. I didn't know that he was sick.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KEY TO THE HIGHWAY")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) I've got the key to the highway, yes, I'm billed out and bound to go. I'm gonna leave, leave here runnin' 'cause walk is most too slow...
BARNETT: The morning after the final session, Broonzy went into the hospital. He died about a year later. His funeral was an event. Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sang a hymn. His pall bearers included Muddy Waters, Tampa Red, Studs Terkel and Chicago folk legend Win Stracke. Stracke's daughter Jane recalls that this image of racial harmony was deliberately designed.
JANE STRACKE: My father made sure that there would be three white pall bearers and three black pallbearers. And he did it very consciously. He wanted it to be kind of a lesson.
BARNETT: As the crowd at the Metropolitan Funeral Parlor sat in quiet reflection, the room filled with the sound of Broonzy himself singing a spiritual, taken from the Randle recording session.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home...
BARNETT: Standing at Broonzy's grave in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery, biographer Bob Riesman says the singer's final encore did not go unnoticed.
RIESMAN: The reporters for both of the Chicago newspapers used exactly the same phrase, which was: Big Bill Broonzy sang at his own funeral.
BARNETT: (Soundbite of song, "Swing Low. Sweet Chariot")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) ...of angels calling to me, coming for to carry me home.
BARNETT: For NPR News, I'm David C. Barnett.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) Oh, you...
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Alan Lomax collection (AFC 2004/004), American Folklife Center
https://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-musicians/big-bill-broonzy
William Lee Conley Broonzy, one of the masters of country blues, was
born in Scott, Mississippi, on June 26, 1893. However, one source says
Broonzy had a twin sister name Lannie Broonzy, who says she has proof
that she was born in 1898, on June 26. This information would have
proved that Broonzy was five years younger than he pretended. Big Bill
was the son of Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher, who had seventeen other
children (Bruynoghe 9). During this time period, many black men added
years to their age either to get a job or join the military, so the
exact date of Broonzy’s birth is not clear (Barnwell 317).
Broonzy’s life as a child was hard because he received only minimal schooling. He had to quit school to help his sharecropping family around the house. Before he moved to Arkansas, Broonzy learned how to play the fiddle from his uncle Jerry Belcher. At the age of fourteen, he started working for tips at country dances, picnics, and he played for the church (Broonzy). During the years 1912-1917, Broonzy worked part time as a preacher and violinist.
Then Broonzy served in the US Army during World War I. After his discharge, he returned back to Arkansas. This is the time when he decided that farming was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He wanted to make his living as a guitar player and singer. In 1924, Broonzy moved to Chicago to start his music career partly because of all the racism that was happening in the South. Under the guidance of Papa Charlie Jackson, Broonzy learned how to play the guitar. In the 1930’s Broonzy became known as one of the major artists on the Chicago Blues scene. During this time he performed with other top blues artist in Chicago– like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Jazz Gillum, Lonnie Johnson, and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. Also, while trying to make it in the music business, he worked as a janitor and maintenance man (Big Bill Broonzy).
In 1938 Broonzy performed at John Hammond’s famous Spiritual and Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was the first time that he had ever performed in front of a white audience. After the concert, people started calling him “Big Bill” Broonzy. At this time Broonzy received newfound fame as the father of Chicago blues.(Broonzy). He was one of the best known blues players and recorded over 260 blues songs including Feelin’ Low Down, Remember Big Bill, Make Me Getaway, and Big Bill Broonzy Sings Country Blues (Brewer 15). His recording career spanned five long decades as he traveled from Mississippi to Chicago and even to Europe, where he became well-known. There are forty-two of his albums still available (Cox 113).
After the arrival of artists like Muddy Waters and the playing of the electric guitar, Broonzy’s brand of blues was pushed aside. Rather than retire, he changed his style of music to folk blues. In 1951, Broonzy toured Europe where he performed standard blues, traditional folk tunes, and spirituals to appreciative audiences. The following year Broonzy returned to Europe with pianist Blind John Davis. He opened the doors for other American blues artists to tour there as well. In 1955, with the help of writer Yannick Bruynoghe, he told the story of his life in the book Big Bill Broonzy. This book was originally published in London. Big Bill Broonzy’s book was one of the first autobiographies by a blues man (Big Bill Broonzy). In 1957, William Lee Conley Broonzy was diagnosed with throat cancer. He continued to perform, although he had with great pain, until he died of throat cancer on August 15, 1958. In 1980, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame (Cox 113).
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/riesman/index.html
A
record by Big Bill Broonzy was the first blues record I purchased. I
got it in the spring of 1960 at my local music store in Ealing in West
London where I grew up. Bill’s record was in the Folk Music section,
alongside Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Leadbelly and
possibly Joan Baez. I listened to these other artists a year later. Bill
had toured in Europe quite a bit, and was a well-known name to me. I
loved his voice, his guitar playing and his handsome face. I was 15
years old, and had been playing guitar for four years. It wasn’t until
two years later that I discovered that in Ealing we were lucky enough to
have The Ealing Club, a crypt-like basement where Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies regularly performed (as did the fledgling Rolling Stones a
little later)—they had met and worked with Big Bill a few times, and
played some of his songs. I always felt close to Big Bill. He was my
first Blues crush. I felt I had sat at his feet. If I were to allow my
heart to tell the tale, I would say that I had actually sat at his feet,
and had heard the pain and joy of his life firsthand through his
wonderful songs.
Bob Riesman’s book makes quite a bit of the way Big Bill reinvented himself, and possibly invented much of his past in a creative manner. I’m not known for my love of facts either. If a Blues, R&B or rock ’n’ roll career life-story is worth telling, it’s worth dressing up. I’m not an academic biographer. Riesman is that, and he gets close to the real truth about Big Bill’s life, but does so in a generous and non-judgemental way that actually deepens the impact and power of everything Bill did as a creative artist and musician who reserved the right to gild the lily. In particular, Bill’s family life, his years doing rough work, and his ability to reflect the stories and experiences of his contemporaries, all combine in this book to bring the terrible racial events and atrocities of those times back into relevance as historical facts rather than blues hearsay.
We’ve heard the songs, we’ve seen the face, we may even have listened to Big Bill himself telling interviewers like Alan Lomax how it really was, in his own inimitable and creative way. This book sets Bill’s extraordinary life and career in meticulously researched perspective. This giant of man—Big Bill Broonzy—deserves such a book, and Riesman is clearly the right man for the job. His affection for his subject is as evident as his respect. This is a compelling historical biography of an artist who sang right at the beginning of a musical era that later included rock ’n’ roll. If rock ’n’ roll and all its recent spawn can in any sense be regarded as art, or carries any social meaning, or transmits reflective or historical relevance to those who love it, this book will help to explain why.
Back before it all caught fire, we heard Big Bill, and we knew that music could tell the truth as well as entertain. Riesman makes it clear that such music might not relate the facts, but he never for a second doubts that Big Bill Broonzy knew the truth, even if he couldn’t resist dressing it up sometimes.
I toast the research. I toast the show business. I mourn the big African-American man who taught me that when you are a minstrel your main job is to entertain. The truth will follow.—Pete Townshend, December 2010
“Big Bill Broonzy was one of the most influential African American blues artists in the 1930s and 1940s and the leading figure in the spread of blues to Europe in the 1950s. Up to now, much of his life has been shrouded in mystery and fable, largely created by Broonzy himself. Bob Riesman’s book lifts the veil and reveals a life that was every bit as interesting as the legend.”—David Evans, author The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to the Blues
I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
©2011, 328 pages, 31 halftones
Cloth $27.50 ISBN: 9780226717456 • Buy print book at 20% discount.
E-book edition is forthcoming on our website and from other e-book sources.
University of Chicago Press: 1427 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 USA | Voice: 773.702.7700 | Fax: 773.702.9756
Big Bill Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley, June 26, 1903 [1][2] – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
He left Chicago in 1950 to work as a janitor at Iowa State having performed there and established relationships with a likely view to develop his own influence and craft.[20] After his return to performing, the exposure from I Come for to Sing made it possible for Broonzy to tour Europe in 1951. Here he was greeted with standing ovations and critical praise wherever he played.[21] The tour marked a turning point in his fortunes, and when he returned to the United States he was a featured act with many prominent folk artists, such as Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. From 1953 on, his financial position became more secure, and he was able to live well on his earnings from music. He returned to his solo folk-blues roots and travelled and recorded extensively.[18] Broonzy's numerous performances during the 1950s in British folk and jazz clubs were a significant influence on British audiences' understanding of the blues[22] and bolstered the nascent British folk revival and early blues scene. Many British musicians on the folk scene, such as Bert Jansch, cited him as an important influence.[23] John Lennon, of the Beatles, also cited Broonzy as an important early influence.[24]
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[1] Archived June 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
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[2] Archived October 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
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[3] Archived May 30, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
[4] Archived July 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
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"Eric
Clapton, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and Others Discuss How Big Bill
Broonzy Sparked the British Blues-Rock Explosion in Bob Riesman's New
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"Video: Dr. Joseph Lowery's Benediction (Update- Transcript!)". Dailykos.com. 2009-01-20. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
"Big Bill Broonzy Talks with Studs Terkel on WFMT: 1955/09/13". Pop Up Archive. Archived from the original on February 16, 2016. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
Wald, Elijah (2004). Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Harper. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-06-052427-2.
Whitburn, Joel (1988). Top R&B Singles 1942–1988. Record Research. p. 56. ISBN 0-89820-068-7.
Herzhaft, Gerard (1992). Encyclopedia of the Blues. University of Arkansas Press. p. 39. ISBN 1-55728-252-8.
Big Bill Broonzy
(1893-1958)
Artist Biography by Uncle Dave Lewis
Big Bill Broonzy was born William Lee Conley Broonzy in the tiny town of Scott, Mississippi, just across the river from Arkansas. During his childhood, Broonzy's family -- itinerant sharecroppers and the descendants of ex-slaves -- moved to Pine Bluff to work the fields there. Broonzy learned to play a cigar box fiddle from his uncle, and as a teenager, he played violin in local churches, at community dances, and in a country string band. During World War I, Broonzy enlisted in the U.S. Army, and in 1920 he moved to Chicago and worked in the factories for several years. In 1924 he met Papa Charlie Jackson, a New Orleans native and pioneer blues recording artist for Paramount. Jackson took Broonzy under his wing, taught him guitar, and used him as an accompanist. Broonzy's entire first session at Paramount in 1926 was rejected, but he returned in November 1927 and succeeded in getting his first record, House Rent Stomp, onto Paramount wax. As one of his early records came out with the garbled moniker of Big Bill Broomsley, he decided to shorten his recording name to Big Bill, and this served as his handle on records until after the second World War. Among aliases used for Big Bill on his early releases were Big Bill Johnson, Sammy Sampson, and Slim Hunter.
Broonzy's earliest records do not demonstrate real promise, but this would soon change. In 1930, the Hokum Boys broke up, and Georgia Tom Dorsey decided to keep the act going by bringing in Big Bill and guitarist Frank Brasswell to replace Tampa Red, billing themselves as "the Famous Hokum Boys." With Georgia Tom and Brasswell, Broonzy hit his stride and penned his first great blues original, "I Can't Be Satisfied." This was a hit and helped make his name with record companies. Although only half-a-dozen blues artists made any records during 1932, the worst year in the history of the record business, one of them was Big Bill, who made 20 issued sides that year.
Through Georgia Tom and Tampa Red, Big Bill met Memphis Minnie and toured as her second guitarist in the early '30s, but apparently did not record with her. When he did resume recording in March 1934 it was for Bluebird's newly established Chicago studio under the direction of Lester Melrose. Melrose liked Broonzy's style, and before long, Big Bill would begin working as Melrose's unofficial second-in-command, auditioning artists, matching numbers to performers, booking sessions, and providing backup support to other musicians. He played on literally hundreds of records for Bluebird in the late '30s and into the '40s, including those made by his half-brother, Washboard Sam, Peter Chatman (aka Memphis Slim), John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, and others. With Melrose, Broonzy helped develop the "Bluebird beat," connoting a type of popular blues record that incorporated trap drums and upright string bass. This was the precursor of the "Maxwell Street sound" or "postwar Chicago blues," and helped to redefine the music in a format that would prove popular in the cities. Ironically, while Broonzy was doing all this work for Melrose at Bluebird, his own recordings as singer were primarily made for ARC, and later Columbia's subsidiary Okeh. This was his greatest period, and during this time Broonzy wrote and recorded such songs as "Key to the Highway," "W.P.A. Blues," "All by Myself," and "Unemployment Stomp." For other artists, Broonzy wrote songs such as "Diggin' My Potatoes." All told, Big Bill Broonzy had a hand in creating more than 100 original songs.
When promoter John Hammond sought a traditional blues singer to perform at one of his Spirituals to Swing concerts held at Carnegie Hall in New York City, he was looking for Robert Johnson to foot the bill. Hammond learned that Johnson had recently died, and as a result, Big Bill got the nod to appear at Carnegie Hall on February 5, 1939. This appearance was very well received, and earned Broonzy a role in George Seldes' 1939 film Swingin' the Dream alongside Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. In the early '40s, Big Bill appeared at the Café Society, the Village Vanguard, and the Apollo Theater, in addition to touring with Lil Greenwood, all of which kept Big Bill busy during the AFM recording ban. By the mid- to late '40s, the operation in Chicago with Melrose had finally begun to wind down, just as electric blues started to heat up. Big Bill continued to record for labels ranging from majors Columbia and Mercury to fly-by-nights such as Hub and RPM. In 1949, Broonzy decided to take some time off from music, and got a job working as a janitor at the Iowa State University of Science & Technology in Ames.
In 1951 Broonzy was sought out by DJ and writer Studs Terkel and appeared in the latter's concert series I Come for to Sing. Suddenly, Broonzy started to get a lot of press attention, and by September of that year, he was in Paris recording for French Vogue. On this occasion Broonzy was finally able to wax his tune "Black, Brown and White," a song about race relations that had been in his book for years, but every record company he had ever sung it for had turned it down. In Europe, Broonzy proved incredibly popular, more so than at any time in the United States. Two separate documentary films were made on his life, in France and Belgium, respectively, and from 1951 until ill health finally put him out of the running in the fall of 1957, Broonzy nearly doubled his own 1927-1949 output in terms of new recordings.
Broonzy updated his act by adding traditional folk songs to his set, along the lines of what Josh White and Leadbelly had done in then-recent times. He took a tremendous amount of flak for doing so, as blues purists condemned Broonzy for turning his back on traditional blues style in order to concoct shows that were appealing to white tastes. But this misses the point of his whole life's work: Broonzy was always about popularizing blues, and he was the main pioneer in the entrepreneurial spirit as it applies to the field. His songwriting, producing, and work as a go-between with Lester Melrose is exactly the sort of thing that Willie Dixon would do with Chess in the '50s. This was the part of his career that Broonzy himself valued most highly, and his latter-day fame and popularity were a just reward for a life spent working so hard on behalf of his given discipline and fellow musicians. It would be a short reward, though; just about the time the autobiography he had written with Yannick Bruynoghe, Big Bill Blues, appeared in 1955, he learned he had throat cancer. Big Bill Broonzy died at age 65 in August, 1958, and left a recorded legacy which, in sheer size and depth, well exceeds that of any blues artist born on his side of the year 1900.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/bigbillbroonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Although William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy achieved fame and success in the Chicago blues scene and the folk revival in the United States and abroad, some of his earliest encounters with the blues and his earliest experiences as a performer and song writer were in Arkansas. Born in Scott, Mississippi, on June, 26 1893, to Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher, Big Bill Broonzy was one of seventeen children. Broonzy soon moved with his family to the Pine Bluff area (Jefferson County), where he spent most of his childhood years. He began performing music at an early age, playing for social and church events on the fiddle, which he learned from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. In addition to odd jobs as a musician, Broonzy also served briefly as a pastor in the Pine Bluff area before 1918.
Between the years 1917 and 1919, Broonzy served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Europe. After his discharge in 1919, Broonzy returned to Arkansas for a brief time, playing in clubs around the Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Pine Bluff areas. In the early 1920s, Broonzy moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he switched instruments to the guitar, taught to him by Papa Charlie Jackson, and began a prolific recording career under the Paramount, Columbia, Bluebird, Okeh, and Chess record labels. Examples of his recording career can be found on numerous compilations. The most comprehensive collection is the twelve-volume anthology of “The Complete Works of Big Bill Broonzy,” which was produced by Document Records beginning in 1994.
Influenced by musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Broonzy developed an amalgamated form of the blues. By combining ragtime and hokum blues with country blues, he created a style that foreshadowed the post�”World War II Chicago sound, which was later defined by such artists as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.
In 1938, Broonzy filled in for Robert Johnson, who had died unexpectedly, at the Spirituals to Swing Concert produced by John Hammond at Carnegie Hall. The fame achieved from this event and a follow-up concert in 1939 established Broonzy as a key figure in the Chicago blues scene. While in Chicago, Broonzy recorded more than three hundred songs and remained a popular and well-respected artist throughout the 1940s. His prolific musical output is evident from his fruitful solo career and his collaborations with other artists, such as Sonny Boy Williamson and Brownie McGhee.
With the rise of electric blues in the early 1950s, Broonzy became an active supporter of the folk blues genre. He played a Martin model 00028, a beautiful instrument. Bill played one of these from the 1950s to his death in 1958. In 1951, Broonzy took his first tour of Europe, where he was met with enthusiasm and appreciation. His appearances in Europe introduced the blues to European audiences and were especially influential in London’s emerging skiffle and rock blues scene. Broonzy’s success also set the stage for later blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II and Muddy Waters to play European venues. Broonzy toured Europe again in 1955 and 1957.
Broonzy’s autobiography, Big Hill Blues, was published with the aid of Danish writer Yannick Bruynoghe in 1955. Shortly after his final tour in 1957, Broonzy was diagnosed with throat and lung cancer. He continued to perform until his death on August 14, 1958, in Chicago. Broonzy was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980.
Source: James Nadal
Big Bill Broonzy
The Blues: Chicago 1937-1945
AllMusic Review by arwulf
Released in 2002 by Fremeaux & Associes, The Blues: Chicago 1937-1945 is an exceptionally fine 36-track anthology of recordings made for the ARC, Vocalion, Okeh, and Columbia labels by Big Bill Broonzy during a period when he collaborated with some of the Windy City's most sure-footed players. In addition to pianists Blind John Davis, Joshua Altheimer, Horace Malcolm, Memphis Slim, and Big Maceo Merriweather, Broonzy is heard with trumpeters Punch Miller and Alfred Bell; clarinetist Odell Rand, saxophonists Buster Bennett and Bill Osborne; blues harpist Jazz Gillum, and a jug blower by the name of Oliver Nelson. Listen also for electrically amplified guitarist George Barnes, bassists Ransom Knowling and Bill Settles; and percussionists Judge Riley, Fred Williams, and Washboard Sam. Fremeaux's selections are generally well chosen, and on this, the label's only Broonzy
collection to date, the records document his progress from the late
'30s into a decade when the world became convulsed by war and the
accelerated pace of life began to be reflected in the music. In essence,
the period sampled on this collection was Broonzy's
first golden age. During the '50s he would become a living archetype of
the blues in his own land and especially in Europe. While his way of
handling the guitar was always substantial and pleasant, the main reason
to listen to Big Bill
is to absorb the incredible magic of his warm and expressive voice.
This double-disc set is recommended for anyone who loves or would like
to learn to love the blues as it sounded at the end of the Great
Depression and during the Second World War.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo6701925.html
Big Bill Broonzy was one of America's most popular blues
musicians — a father figure to many blues legends and an acknowledged
influence on rockers such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. Yet Broonzy's life has remained something of a mystery until now. A new biography called I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
traces the musician's path from the rural South to the South Side of
Chicago. Author Bob Riesman's decade of research has yielded some
surprising results.
Broonzy landed in Chicago sometime in the early 1920s, playing acoustic country blues. He was an accomplished guitarist, and his sense of showmanship at dances and on his early recordings made him a popular entertainer with black audiences.
Fellow musician Billy Boy Arnold saw Broonzy at a Chicago club two decades later, when Arnold was a teenager.
"This big giant of a guy came in the doorway with a guitar in his hand," Arnold says. "And he was muscular, not fat. Black as midnight. Smiled all the time, and seemed to be a very jolly guy."
By then, the older musician had switched from acoustic to electric guitar and adapted to the slower urban blues style. Broonzy became the king of the Chicago blues scene. But it wasn't long before the king lost his crown.
A younger generation of blues performers was starting to pack audiences into South Side clubs. Arnold says everything changed in 1950 with the release of Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone."
"It was real powerful and lowdown as you could get," Arnold says. "And, you see, the people really liked that, 'cause that's what they feel in their heart."
So Big Bill Broonzy changed his musical direction. Chicago was home
to a growing folk scene, fueled by young, white intellectuals. It was a
time when performers were using music as a tool for social change. And
Broonzy was inspired to write what would become one of his most
memorable songs, "Black, Brown and White Blues":
This little song that I'm singing about
People you all know it's true
If you're black and gotta work for a living
This is what they will say to you
They says, "If you're white, you're all right
If you're brown, stick around
But if you're black, oh brother,
Get back, get back get back"
"Black, Brown and White Blues" was probably heard more by white audiences than black. And in spite of the song's pointed critique of discrimination, there were some in the black community who didn't appreciate Broonzy's shift into folk music.
"I didn't like the folk stuff that he was doing," Arnold says. "And he didn't play that 'Jimmy Crack Corn' in no black clubs, because that wouldn't have went over no kind of way."
But Broonzy biographer Bob Riesman says the singer's new focus was just a demonstration of his versatility — and his instinct for survival.
"I don't think he would have seen that as compromising his integrity in any way," Riesman says. "He was a working musician."
Changing The Story
Broonzy changed more than his musical style. Throughout his life, the singer also altered parts of his personal history. During a lengthy recording session in 1957, he told some compelling stories about his childhood in rural Mississippi and about the songs he learned from his parents, who he said were slaves. But Riesman says the singer didn't really come from Mississippi, his parents were not slaves and his name wasn't Broonzy.
"It turned out that he was Lee Bradley of Jefferson County, Ark., about 60 miles southeast of Little Rock," Riesman says.
After 10 years of research, Riesman says he's come to reconcile the facts of Broonzy's life with the stories the musician told.
"He treated his life story as a set of fluid possibilities, as opposed to fixed events," Riesman says. "And his imaginative powers were formidable. As Studs Terkel said, 'Bill is telling the truth — his truth.' "
By the mid-1950s, Broonzy was captivating audiences across the U.S. and Europe with his songs and stories. But his newfound success wouldn't last much longer. The singer's health started to deteriorate due to a cancer that was spreading through his lungs.
A Chicago radio personality, Studs Terkel oversaw Broonzy's final recording session, which had been set up by a Cleveland disc jockey. Bill Randle was nationally famous as a pop-music hit-maker, having boosted the careers of The Crew Cuts and Pat Boone. In a 1999 interview, the late Randle said financing the Broonzy sessions was partially an act of penitence.
"In the course of it, I guess I developed what you would call a cultural guilt complex," Randle said. "And also, I had the money. So I decided that I would just do some things that I thought should be done. And one of them was to record Big Bill Broonzy. I didn't know he was sick."
Lessons In The Afterlife
The morning after the final session, Broonzy went into the hospital; he died about a year later in 1958. His funeral was an event. Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sang a hymn. His pall bearers included Muddy Waters, Tampa Red, Studs Terkel and Chicago folk legend Win Stracke. Stracke's daughter, Jane, recalls that this image of racial harmony was deliberately designed.
"My father made sure that there would be three white pall bearers and three black pallbearers," she says. "And he did it very consciously. He wanted it to be kind of a lesson."
As the crowd at the Metropolitan Funeral Parlor sat in quiet reflection, the room filled with the sound of Broonzy himself, singing a spiritual taken from the Randle recording session.
Standing at Broonzy's grave in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery, Riesman says the singer's final encore did not go unnoticed.
"The reporters for both of the Chicago newspapers used exactly the same phrase," he says, "which was, 'Big Bill Broonzy sang at his own funeral.' "
At the end of a life that spanned thousands of miles, a range of musical styles and a chameleon-like ability to adapt when others told him not to, Big Bill Broonzy got the last word.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/big-bill-broonzy-a-sadly-neglected-blues-hero/
Big Bill Broonzy was a giant of the 1930s urban blues, a giant of a man and someone that just about every other musician who met him respected. He was a key player in the transition between the country blues of the Mississippi Delta and the electric blues of 1950s. Born in Mississippi on 26 June 1893 and raised in Arkansas, he was one of 17 children whose parents had been born into slavery. By the time he was 19 years old, he became an itinerant preacher and in 1920 he moved to Chicago where, by the mid 1920s he’d learned to play the guitar and recorded first for the Paramount label in 1927.Throughout the 1930s he was a prolific recording artist – perhaps the most prolific. He recorded on a variety of labels as Big Bill Johnson, Big Bill Broomsley, Big Bill and his Jug Busters, and just plain Big Bill. Part of Broonzy’s attraction to the blacks that had migrated to the cities was that he sang about things that mattered to them. it’s something that many other singers that followed found worked for them too.In 1938 he appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York in John Hammond’s Spirituals to Swing Concert and besides being a prodigious solo recording artist he was a hard working accompanist, with among others, Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson, Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey.to break into the music business and become a professional musician. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy helped Muddy by allowing him to open for his shows in the clubs on the southside of Chicago. In 1960 Muddy paid his respects by releasing the album, Muddy Waters Sings “Bill Bill”. The album is full on electric Chicago blues and it’s a fitting tribute to the man who helped so many and shaped the blues as we have come to know them.
After 1945 Broonzy recorded songs that were the bridge that allowed many younger musicians to cross over to the future of the Blues. His 1945 recording, ‘Where the Blues Began’, with Big Maceo clearly shows the way forward. In 1956 he was diagnosed with throat cancer, but it did not stop him and in July 1957 he recorded a unique ‘last will and testament’ a five LP boxed set on Verve, which included Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Entitled The Big Bill Broonzy Story, he was at his best, telling the stories behind the songs. He died on 15 August 1958, and since then his legend has dimmed somewhat, as though his popularity was his undoing; sometimes obscurity serves a reputation better.
The Big Bill Broonzy Story can be bought here.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo6701925.html
I Feel So Good
The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
Biography and Letters
Chicago and Illinois
Music: General Music
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137398692/big-bill-broonzy-historys-musical-chameleon
Chicago and Illinois
Music: General Music
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137398692/big-bill-broonzy-historys-musical-chameleon
Big Bill Broonzy: History's Musical Chameleon
Big Bill Broonzy's shape-shifting musical identity is documented in the book I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy. Gerrit Schilp/Redferns
Broonzy landed in Chicago sometime in the early 1920s, playing acoustic country blues. He was an accomplished guitarist, and his sense of showmanship at dances and on his early recordings made him a popular entertainer with black audiences.
Fellow musician Billy Boy Arnold saw Broonzy at a Chicago club two decades later, when Arnold was a teenager.
"This big giant of a guy came in the doorway with a guitar in his hand," Arnold says. "And he was muscular, not fat. Black as midnight. Smiled all the time, and seemed to be a very jolly guy."
By then, the older musician had switched from acoustic to electric guitar and adapted to the slower urban blues style. Broonzy became the king of the Chicago blues scene. But it wasn't long before the king lost his crown.
A younger generation of blues performers was starting to pack audiences into South Side clubs. Arnold says everything changed in 1950 with the release of Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone."
"It was real powerful and lowdown as you could get," Arnold says. "And, you see, the people really liked that, 'cause that's what they feel in their heart."
This little song that I'm singing about
People you all know it's true
If you're black and gotta work for a living
This is what they will say to you
They says, "If you're white, you're all right
If you're brown, stick around
But if you're black, oh brother,
Get back, get back get back"
"Black, Brown and White Blues" was probably heard more by white audiences than black. And in spite of the song's pointed critique of discrimination, there were some in the black community who didn't appreciate Broonzy's shift into folk music.
"I didn't like the folk stuff that he was doing," Arnold says. "And he didn't play that 'Jimmy Crack Corn' in no black clubs, because that wouldn't have went over no kind of way."
But Broonzy biographer Bob Riesman says the singer's new focus was just a demonstration of his versatility — and his instinct for survival.
"I don't think he would have seen that as compromising his integrity in any way," Riesman says. "He was a working musician."
Changing The Story
Broonzy changed more than his musical style. Throughout his life, the singer also altered parts of his personal history. During a lengthy recording session in 1957, he told some compelling stories about his childhood in rural Mississippi and about the songs he learned from his parents, who he said were slaves. But Riesman says the singer didn't really come from Mississippi, his parents were not slaves and his name wasn't Broonzy.
"It turned out that he was Lee Bradley of Jefferson County, Ark., about 60 miles southeast of Little Rock," Riesman says.
After 10 years of research, Riesman says he's come to reconcile the facts of Broonzy's life with the stories the musician told.
"He treated his life story as a set of fluid possibilities, as opposed to fixed events," Riesman says. "And his imaginative powers were formidable. As Studs Terkel said, 'Bill is telling the truth — his truth.' "
By the mid-1950s, Broonzy was captivating audiences across the U.S. and Europe with his songs and stories. But his newfound success wouldn't last much longer. The singer's health started to deteriorate due to a cancer that was spreading through his lungs.
A Chicago radio personality, Studs Terkel oversaw Broonzy's final recording session, which had been set up by a Cleveland disc jockey. Bill Randle was nationally famous as a pop-music hit-maker, having boosted the careers of The Crew Cuts and Pat Boone. In a 1999 interview, the late Randle said financing the Broonzy sessions was partially an act of penitence.
"In the course of it, I guess I developed what you would call a cultural guilt complex," Randle said. "And also, I had the money. So I decided that I would just do some things that I thought should be done. And one of them was to record Big Bill Broonzy. I didn't know he was sick."
Lessons In The Afterlife
The morning after the final session, Broonzy went into the hospital; he died about a year later in 1958. His funeral was an event. Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sang a hymn. His pall bearers included Muddy Waters, Tampa Red, Studs Terkel and Chicago folk legend Win Stracke. Stracke's daughter, Jane, recalls that this image of racial harmony was deliberately designed.
"My father made sure that there would be three white pall bearers and three black pallbearers," she says. "And he did it very consciously. He wanted it to be kind of a lesson."
As the crowd at the Metropolitan Funeral Parlor sat in quiet reflection, the room filled with the sound of Broonzy himself, singing a spiritual taken from the Randle recording session.
Standing at Broonzy's grave in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery, Riesman says the singer's final encore did not go unnoticed.
"The reporters for both of the Chicago newspapers used exactly the same phrase," he says, "which was, 'Big Bill Broonzy sang at his own funeral.' "
At the end of a life that spanned thousands of miles, a range of musical styles and a chameleon-like ability to adapt when others told him not to, Big Bill Broonzy got the last word.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/big-bill-broonzy-a-sadly-neglected-blues-hero/
Big Bill Broonzy was a giant of the 1930s urban blues, a giant of a man and someone that just about every other musician who met him respected. He was a key player in the transition between the country blues of the Mississippi Delta and the electric blues of 1950s. Born in Mississippi on 26 June 1893 and raised in Arkansas, he was one of 17 children whose parents had been born into slavery. By the time he was 19 years old, he became an itinerant preacher and in 1920 he moved to Chicago where, by the mid 1920s he’d learned to play the guitar and recorded first for the Paramount label in 1927.Throughout the 1930s he was a prolific recording artist – perhaps the most prolific. He recorded on a variety of labels as Big Bill Johnson, Big Bill Broomsley, Big Bill and his Jug Busters, and just plain Big Bill. Part of Broonzy’s attraction to the blacks that had migrated to the cities was that he sang about things that mattered to them. it’s something that many other singers that followed found worked for them too.In 1938 he appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York in John Hammond’s Spirituals to Swing Concert and besides being a prodigious solo recording artist he was a hard working accompanist, with among others, Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson, Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey.to break into the music business and become a professional musician. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy helped Muddy by allowing him to open for his shows in the clubs on the southside of Chicago. In 1960 Muddy paid his respects by releasing the album, Muddy Waters Sings “Bill Bill”. The album is full on electric Chicago blues and it’s a fitting tribute to the man who helped so many and shaped the blues as we have come to know them.
After 1945 Broonzy recorded songs that were the bridge that allowed many younger musicians to cross over to the future of the Blues. His 1945 recording, ‘Where the Blues Began’, with Big Maceo clearly shows the way forward. In 1956 he was diagnosed with throat cancer, but it did not stop him and in July 1957 he recorded a unique ‘last will and testament’ a five LP boxed set on Verve, which included Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Entitled The Big Bill Broonzy Story, he was at his best, telling the stories behind the songs. He died on 15 August 1958, and since then his legend has dimmed somewhat, as though his popularity was his undoing; sometimes obscurity serves a reputation better.
The Big Bill Broonzy Story can be bought here.
https://www.vintageguitar.com/3520/big-bill-broonzy/
Finding two never-released, hour-long concerts by Big Bill Broonzy from 1953 – Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 – on Munich Records – is indeed like unearthing buried treasure.
Broonzy was a towering figure in the blues world, literally and figuratively. Some reports put his height at 6’6″, and beyond his formidable talents as singer, songwriter, and guitarist, he was mentor to younger artists like Muddy Waters and, as the first American bluesman to tour the UK, was a major influence for at least two generations of English musicians of various genres – from British blues pioneers John Mayall and Alexis Korner to rock stars Eric Clapton and Ray Davies to jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, who cites his father’s Broonzy records as his initial inspiration for taking up the instrument.
A nod from Big Bill got Muddy’s foot in the door at Chess Records, and Waters later dedicated an album to him (Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill”) and named his son (bluesman Big Bill Morganfield) after him. Following Bill’s death in August, 1958, Waters was one of his pallbearers, along with Tampa Red, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, author and broadcaster Studs Terkel, and Brother John Sellers, who gave a eulogy at the funeral. (Conflicting dates are given for Broonzy’s birth, but he was probably in his early 60s when he died of throat cancer.)
Though they were both born in Mississippi, Waters’ playing (even after he plugged in and cast the dye for Chicago blues bands) was more indicative of the Delta style. Broonzy, who spent his formative years in Arkansas, learned from Papa Charlie Jackson, and fingerpicked in a style more in common with Eastern Seaboard players like Brownie McGhee, who recorded with the elder bluesman.
Broonzy, cut his first sides in 1927, after moving to Chicago. Over the years, he also recorded with Washboard Sam, Bumble Bee Slim, St. Louis Jimmy, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson (I), Roosevelt Sykes, the Hokum Boys, Sunnyland Slim, Merline Johnson, Jazz Gillum, Casey Bill Weldon, Walter Davis, Victoria Spivey, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Lil Johnson, boogie pianist Albert Ammons, and others. In 1938, he performed at John Hammond’s famous “Spiritual To Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall.
As a writer, he penned such blues standards as “Feel So Good,” “All By Myself,” and the classic “Key To The Highway,” which has been recorded by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Luther Allison, Clifton Chenier, Derek And The Dominos, B.B. King and Eric Clapton, Mance Lipscomb, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dinah Washington, Jesse Fuller, Dr. John, David Bromberg, Freddie King, Junior Wells, John Hammond, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, George “Harmonica” Smith, Charlie Musselwhite, and Snooky Pryor, to name a few.
But perhaps Big Bill’s most important role, and one for which he was perfectly suited, was as blues’ first ambassador to the world. Thanks to the “trad jazz” craze, he made his first trip to England in 1951, and soon started touring there and on the Continent, in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. As his February 26 and 28 appearances in Amsterdam, recorded by Louis Van Gasteren, illustrate, he charmed audiences with his between-song patter and served up a smorgasbord of American music, from blues (like Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” to Leroy Carr’s “When The Sun Goes Down”) to folk songs like “Crawdad Hole” and “John Henry” to spirituals like “Down By The Riverside” to hillbilly music like “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad,” usually credited to Woody Guthrie, to pop fare like “Glory Of Love,” transformed into driving ragtime in the style of his variations of “Guitar Rag” included here, spotlighting his hammer of a right hand.
The sound quality here is surprisingly good, accommodating the full dynamic range of Bill’s voice, from hushed to soaring, with his Martin ringing like a bell. My only quibble is that the songs are indexed with the spoken intro to one song tacked onto the previous song – meaning that if hit your CD changer’s shuffle button you hear a song and the intro to another song, then the machine skips to an entirely different selection. This also makes it difficult for disc-jockeys to play songs in their original settings, with spoken introductions that are informative and often humorous.
Overseas, Broonzy was pleasantly surprised to not encounter the type of racism that was status quo back home (depicted in his well-known “Black, Brown and White”). As recounted in anecdotes and rare photographs in the package’s 40-page booklet, he became comfortable enough to father a son by a Dutch woman in 1956. Although he and the boy’s mother both divorced their then-spouses, and he returned to visit his new family several times, he died before they could marry.
Almost 50 years after his death, these recordings bring Bill Broonzy back to life, and are perhaps the best example of what made him such a giant.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan ’07 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Although he struggled throughout his life to produce a sufficient income, Big Bill Broonzy played an integral role in launching the global popularity of Southern blues. Born to sharecropper parents on June 26, 1893 in Scott, Mississippi, Broonzy grew up in Mississippi and Arkansas. As a child he experimented with homemade guitars and fiddles and by the age of 15 proved he was skilled enough to play at special occasions. During the next five years he mastered his unique vocal techniques and guitar skills that would assist him in his career which began after a stint in the U.S. Army in World War I.
In 1920 Broonzy moved to Chicago to work as a professional musician. He had some luck landing live performances for mostly black crowds at Chicago nightclubs. In 1926 he made his first recording with Paramount Records, playing backup guitar for local blues artists Cripple Clarence Lofton and Bumble Bee Slim. By the early 1930s Broonzy was finally given the opportunity to record under his own name for the Melotone, Oriole, and Champion labels. By the end of the decade he was the top selling male blues vocalist on the Perfect and Vocalion labels and established the widely known Bluebird Beat Chicago Blues sound while recording with the Bluebird label. By this time Broonzy was no longer a solo performer. He began to play with small groups that incorporated the piano, trumpet, saxophone, and sometimes a rhythm section.
By 1945 black musical tastes were moving away from the blues toward jazz and popular music. Broonzy however found and exploited the growing interest of whites in blues. By the late 1940s a new generation of white blues lovers praised him for his spectacular performances with fellow blues and folk musicians Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry. In 1951 his popularity reached Europe when at the age of 58 he performed blues music at the London Jazz Club. He returned the next year to perform with Mahalia Jackson and continued to make appearances in England in 1955 and 1957 as well as in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
After years of supporting himself through various forms of work, Broonzy finally made enough money in 1953 to focus solely on his music. Two years later he wrote his autobiography. In 1957 a lung operation shortened his recording and performing career. Big Bill Broonzy died from cancer in Chicago on August 15, 1958 at the age of 65.
https://www.allaboutbluesmusic.com/big-bill-broonzy/
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=137398692
Finding two never-released, hour-long concerts by Big Bill Broonzy from 1953 – Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 – on Munich Records – is indeed like unearthing buried treasure.
Broonzy was a towering figure in the blues world, literally and figuratively. Some reports put his height at 6’6″, and beyond his formidable talents as singer, songwriter, and guitarist, he was mentor to younger artists like Muddy Waters and, as the first American bluesman to tour the UK, was a major influence for at least two generations of English musicians of various genres – from British blues pioneers John Mayall and Alexis Korner to rock stars Eric Clapton and Ray Davies to jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, who cites his father’s Broonzy records as his initial inspiration for taking up the instrument.
A nod from Big Bill got Muddy’s foot in the door at Chess Records, and Waters later dedicated an album to him (Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill”) and named his son (bluesman Big Bill Morganfield) after him. Following Bill’s death in August, 1958, Waters was one of his pallbearers, along with Tampa Red, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, author and broadcaster Studs Terkel, and Brother John Sellers, who gave a eulogy at the funeral. (Conflicting dates are given for Broonzy’s birth, but he was probably in his early 60s when he died of throat cancer.)
Though they were both born in Mississippi, Waters’ playing (even after he plugged in and cast the dye for Chicago blues bands) was more indicative of the Delta style. Broonzy, who spent his formative years in Arkansas, learned from Papa Charlie Jackson, and fingerpicked in a style more in common with Eastern Seaboard players like Brownie McGhee, who recorded with the elder bluesman.
Broonzy, cut his first sides in 1927, after moving to Chicago. Over the years, he also recorded with Washboard Sam, Bumble Bee Slim, St. Louis Jimmy, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson (I), Roosevelt Sykes, the Hokum Boys, Sunnyland Slim, Merline Johnson, Jazz Gillum, Casey Bill Weldon, Walter Davis, Victoria Spivey, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Lil Johnson, boogie pianist Albert Ammons, and others. In 1938, he performed at John Hammond’s famous “Spiritual To Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall.
As a writer, he penned such blues standards as “Feel So Good,” “All By Myself,” and the classic “Key To The Highway,” which has been recorded by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Luther Allison, Clifton Chenier, Derek And The Dominos, B.B. King and Eric Clapton, Mance Lipscomb, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dinah Washington, Jesse Fuller, Dr. John, David Bromberg, Freddie King, Junior Wells, John Hammond, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, George “Harmonica” Smith, Charlie Musselwhite, and Snooky Pryor, to name a few.
But perhaps Big Bill’s most important role, and one for which he was perfectly suited, was as blues’ first ambassador to the world. Thanks to the “trad jazz” craze, he made his first trip to England in 1951, and soon started touring there and on the Continent, in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. As his February 26 and 28 appearances in Amsterdam, recorded by Louis Van Gasteren, illustrate, he charmed audiences with his between-song patter and served up a smorgasbord of American music, from blues (like Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” to Leroy Carr’s “When The Sun Goes Down”) to folk songs like “Crawdad Hole” and “John Henry” to spirituals like “Down By The Riverside” to hillbilly music like “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad,” usually credited to Woody Guthrie, to pop fare like “Glory Of Love,” transformed into driving ragtime in the style of his variations of “Guitar Rag” included here, spotlighting his hammer of a right hand.
The sound quality here is surprisingly good, accommodating the full dynamic range of Bill’s voice, from hushed to soaring, with his Martin ringing like a bell. My only quibble is that the songs are indexed with the spoken intro to one song tacked onto the previous song – meaning that if hit your CD changer’s shuffle button you hear a song and the intro to another song, then the machine skips to an entirely different selection. This also makes it difficult for disc-jockeys to play songs in their original settings, with spoken introductions that are informative and often humorous.
Overseas, Broonzy was pleasantly surprised to not encounter the type of racism that was status quo back home (depicted in his well-known “Black, Brown and White”). As recounted in anecdotes and rare photographs in the package’s 40-page booklet, he became comfortable enough to father a son by a Dutch woman in 1956. Although he and the boy’s mother both divorced their then-spouses, and he returned to visit his new family several times, he died before they could marry.
Almost 50 years after his death, these recordings bring Bill Broonzy back to life, and are perhaps the best example of what made him such a giant.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan ’07 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy (1893-1958)
Although he struggled throughout his life to produce a sufficient income, Big Bill Broonzy played an integral role in launching the global popularity of Southern blues. Born to sharecropper parents on June 26, 1893 in Scott, Mississippi, Broonzy grew up in Mississippi and Arkansas. As a child he experimented with homemade guitars and fiddles and by the age of 15 proved he was skilled enough to play at special occasions. During the next five years he mastered his unique vocal techniques and guitar skills that would assist him in his career which began after a stint in the U.S. Army in World War I.
In 1920 Broonzy moved to Chicago to work as a professional musician. He had some luck landing live performances for mostly black crowds at Chicago nightclubs. In 1926 he made his first recording with Paramount Records, playing backup guitar for local blues artists Cripple Clarence Lofton and Bumble Bee Slim. By the early 1930s Broonzy was finally given the opportunity to record under his own name for the Melotone, Oriole, and Champion labels. By the end of the decade he was the top selling male blues vocalist on the Perfect and Vocalion labels and established the widely known Bluebird Beat Chicago Blues sound while recording with the Bluebird label. By this time Broonzy was no longer a solo performer. He began to play with small groups that incorporated the piano, trumpet, saxophone, and sometimes a rhythm section.
By 1945 black musical tastes were moving away from the blues toward jazz and popular music. Broonzy however found and exploited the growing interest of whites in blues. By the late 1940s a new generation of white blues lovers praised him for his spectacular performances with fellow blues and folk musicians Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry. In 1951 his popularity reached Europe when at the age of 58 he performed blues music at the London Jazz Club. He returned the next year to perform with Mahalia Jackson and continued to make appearances in England in 1955 and 1957 as well as in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
After years of supporting himself through various forms of work, Broonzy finally made enough money in 1953 to focus solely on his music. Two years later he wrote his autobiography. In 1957 a lung operation shortened his recording and performing career. Big Bill Broonzy died from cancer in Chicago on August 15, 1958 at the age of 65.
https://www.allaboutbluesmusic.com/big-bill-broonzy/
BIG BILL BROONZY
Big Bill Broonzy was a John the Baptist figure in the scripture of the Blues: a charismatic fore-runner of greater things to come. He took the sound of early Chicago Blues Bands out of the Windy City, across the country, and eventually to Europe where he planted a seed that came back in The British Invasion in the 60s to revolutionise popular music in America and around the world.
Born on the banks of the Mississippi in 1893, he was playing violin in church and at parties by the age of 10. After serving in the Army and the pulpit, he moved to Chicago in the early 20’s, where he switched to guitar and found an audience hungry for the sounds of the Delta. He began recording with Paramount in 1927, his discs featuring his strong, emotive voice and his witty, sensitive songwriting. His records sold well in the early 30’s with an entertaining mixture of 12-bar Blues, Folk tunes and Gospel songs. His dextrous flatpicking guitar style also made him a welcome guest on other artist’s records. He played often with Hudson Whittaker, (Tampa Red) and these two friends and drinking buddies formed a kind of ‘clearing house’ for young musicians new in town, finding them gigs, rehearsal spaces and others to play with. For example, Memphis Minnie became a Chicago legend after beating Bill and Red in a ‘cutting contest’ at a South-side club, and she played a part in mentoring new arrivals from the South too.
Big Bill’s music became more urbanised in the mid-30’s and he usually played with pianist Black Bob Hudson, using various bassists and drummers and sometimes introducing horns to give a more contemporary ‘swing’ sound. As the 30’s progressed, Big Bill was in the forefront in developing the ‘Chicago sound’, with bigger, louder bands as well as with intimate trios and small combos. His recorded output in these years was huge, cutting literally hundreds of solo tracks for many labels, on top of his work backing players like Bumble Bee Slim, Lil Green, his half-brother Washboard Sam and the early records of Sonny Boy Williamson.
In 1938, Big Bill was invited to play at John Hammond’s ‘Spirituals to Swing’ Concert at Carnegie Hall, which spread his fame well beyond the Blues communities of Chicago and the South. The next years saw Big Bill playing clubs and concert halls all over the USA, with steady record sales, including his most famous song, ‘Key to the Highway’. Big Bill’s concert appearances, especially with Memphis Slim on piano, and an extended stay in New York, brought him to even wider notice. A tour of Europe was arranged in 1951 which was to have a profound effect on that Continent. Audiences on the eastern side of the pond, especially in Britain and France, were knocked out by Big Bill’s powerful and authentic performances. His Blues, Folk and Gospel music opened many peoples eyes and ears to this newly discovered Black culture. Many British Blues players cite these events, and Big Bill’s subsequent tours over the next few years, as their inspiration for getting into the Blues, which in turn fuelled the rock revolution that shook the 60’s.
‘Black, Brown and White’ was an important song after Big Bill was gone, in the struggle for Civil Rights;
Big Bill’s versatility allowed him to spend the some time touring the world as an ambassador for all kinds of African American folk music, and back in the States he continued to recorded with Blind John Davis and Pete Seeger for the Folkways label. His recordings in London allowed Big Bill to express himself on the subject of race more forcefully than he felt able to in the USA, where ‘Jim Crow’ laws were still in force. There is no doubt that Big Bill’s work raised consciousness about the Civil Rights movement that paid dividends a few years later. His biography was published in 1955, but by then his health was beginning to fail.
This Gentle Giant of a man, supremely talented and hugely generous of spirit, died from cancer in Chicago in August 1958.
BIG BILL BROONZY - FOUR CLASSIC ALBUMS PLUS
Big Bill Broonzy was the Main Man on the Chicago Blues scene in the inter-war years, fostering the transition from rural to urban Blues. His own considerable songwriting skills and huge repertoire reflect this change, and his flatpicking guitar style and great voice made him a star of the Folk/Blues revival of the fifties. This bargain, re-mastered double CD has his finest album, 'Big Bill's Blues' plus three more collections, totalling 45 tracks, which show the breadth of the man's talent.
https://folkways.si.edu/big-bill-broonzy/sings-folk-songs/american-folk-blues/music/album/smithsonian
Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs
Cut in 1962, these tracks catch Broonzy in fine form near the end of his distinguished career. His powerful voice and guitar are showcased in a set which includes traditional blues, gospel, and folk songs all performed with undeniable authority. "Broonzy moves with amazing ease from silky croon to brassy howl...[and] dazzles with rough-edged intricacy." — The Boston Globe
Vinyl edition details:
180g vinyl; Remastered in 2016 by Grammy-award winning engineer, Pete Reiniger, from original analog tapes; 8 page custom booklet with original notes, lyrics, and new essay by Broonzy biographer Bob Riesman
RELATED VIDEOS:
RELATED LESSON PLAN
Track Listing
Audio Player
101
Backwater Blues Bill Broonzy 2:50
Audio Player
102
This Train Bill Broonzy 3:00
Audio Player
103
I Don't Want No Woman (To Try to Be My Boss) Bill Broonzy 3:08
Audio Player
104
Martha Bill Broonzy 5:00
Audio Player
105
Tell Me Who Bill Broonzy 3:41
Audio Player
201
Bill Bailey Bill Broonzy 1:57
Audio Player
202
Alberta Bill Broonzy 2:13
Audio Player
203
Goin' Down This Road Bill Broonzy 2:22
Audio Player
204
Tell Me What Kind of Man Jesus Is Bill Broonzy 2:16
Audio Player
205
John Henry Bill Broonzy 4:45
Audio Player
206
Glory of Love Bill Broonzy 3:24
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
From member station WCPN, David C. Barnett has the story of a performer who survived by constantly reinventing himself.
DAVID C: The man who came to be known as Big Bill Broonzy arrived in Chicago sometime in the early 1920s, playing acoustic country blues.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: Musician Billy Boy Arnold was a teenager when he first saw Broonzy at a club, two decades later.
BILLY ARNOLD: This big giant of a guy came in the doorway with a guitar in his hand.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARNOLD: And he was muscular - he wasn't fat. Black as midnight, you know, and drank and, you know, and seemed to be a very jolly guy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LOVE MY WHISKEY")
BIG BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) I love my whiskey, and I got a quarter right here in my hand...
BARNETT: Broonzy became the king of the Chicago blues scene but the king was about to lose his crown.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: A younger generation of blues performers was starting to pack audiences into South Side clubs. Billy Arnold says everything changed in 1950 with the release of Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROLLIN' STONE")
MUDDY WATERS: (Singing) I went to my baby's house, and I sit down, oh, on her steps...
ARNOLD: It was real powerful and as lowdown as you could get. And the people really liked that 'cause that's what they feel in they heart, see?
BARNETT: So, Big Bill Broonzy changed his musical direction. Chicago was home to a growing folk scene, fueled by young, white intellectuals. It was a time when performers were using music as a tool for social change, and Broonzy was inspired to write what would become one of his most memorable songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLACK, BROWN AND WHITE BLUES")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) This little song that I'm singing about, people you all know it's true. If you're black and gotta work for a living, now this is what they will say to you. They says, if you's white, you're alright. If you's brown, stick around. But if you's black, oh brother, get back, get back, get back.
BARNETT: Billy Arnold wasn't very fond of his old friend's new direction.
ARNOLD: I didn't like the folk stuff he was doing. And he didn't play that Jimmy Crack Corn in no black clubs, 'cause that wouldn't have went over no kind of way.
BARNETT: Broonzy biographer Bob Riesman thinks that the singer's new focus was just a demonstration of his versatility and his instinct for survival.
BOB RIESMAN: I don't think he would have seen that as compromising his integrity in any way. He was a working musician.
BARNETT: But Broonzy changed more than his musical style. Throughout his life, the singer also altered parts of his personal history.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: During a lengthy recording session in 1957, he told some compelling stories about his childhood in rural Mississippi and about the roots of his music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: My mother was a slave, my father was a slave, and I'm just going by what I got from them about different songs.
BARNETT: But Bob Riesman says the singer didn't really come from Mississippi, his parents were not slaves and his name wasn't Broonzy.
RIESMAN: It turned out that he was Lee Bradley of Jefferson County, Arkansas, about 60 miles or so southeast of Little Rock.
BARNETT: After 10 years of research, Riesman says he's come to reconcile the facts of Broonzy's life with the stories he told.
RIESMAN: He treated his life story as a set of fluid possibilities, as opposed to fixed events. And his imaginative powers were formidable. As Studs Terkel said, Bill is telling the truth - his truth.
BARNETT: By the mid-1950s, Bill Broonzy was captivating audiences across the U.S. and Europe with his songs and stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARNETT: But his newfound success wouldn't last much longer. The singer's health started to deteriorate...
(SOUNDBITE OF COUGHING)
BARNETT: ...due to a cancer that was spreading through his lungs.
STUDS TERKEL: Bill, you want to hear how this sounds?
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: Yeah, I did, yeah, if it ain't too horrible.
BARNETT: Chicago radio personality Studs Terkel oversaw Broonzy's final recording session, which had been set up by a Cleveland disc jockey. Bill Randle was nationally famous as a pop music hit-maker, having boosted the careers of the Crew Cuts and Pat Boone. In a 1999 interview, the late Randle said financing the Broonzy sessions was partially an act of penitence.
BILL RANDLE: In the course of it, I guess I developed what you would call a cultural guilt complex. And also I had the money. So, I decided that I would just do some things that I thought should be done, and one of them was to record Big Bill Broonzy. I didn't know that he was sick.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KEY TO THE HIGHWAY")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) I've got the key to the highway, yes, I'm billed out and bound to go. I'm gonna leave, leave here runnin' 'cause walk is most too slow...
BARNETT: The morning after the final session, Broonzy went into the hospital. He died about a year later. His funeral was an event. Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sang a hymn. His pall bearers included Muddy Waters, Tampa Red, Studs Terkel and Chicago folk legend Win Stracke. Stracke's daughter Jane recalls that this image of racial harmony was deliberately designed.
JANE STRACKE: My father made sure that there would be three white pall bearers and three black pallbearers. And he did it very consciously. He wanted it to be kind of a lesson.
BARNETT: As the crowd at the Metropolitan Funeral Parlor sat in quiet reflection, the room filled with the sound of Broonzy himself singing a spiritual, taken from the Randle recording session.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home...
BARNETT: Standing at Broonzy's grave in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery, biographer Bob Riesman says the singer's final encore did not go unnoticed.
RIESMAN: The reporters for both of the Chicago newspapers used exactly the same phrase, which was: Big Bill Broonzy sang at his own funeral.
BARNETT: (Soundbite of song, "Swing Low. Sweet Chariot")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) ...of angels calling to me, coming for to carry me home.
BARNETT: For NPR News, I'm David C. Barnett.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT")
BILL BROONZY AND HIS FAT FOUR: (Singing) Oh, you...
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
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process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and
may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may
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The Invention and Reinvention of Big Bill Broonzy
by Kevin D. Greene
242 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 10 halftones, notes, bibl., index
- Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-4649-7
Published: November 2018 - Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-4648-0
Published: November 2018 - eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-4650-3
Published: September 2018
Buy this Book
- E-Book $22.99
-
For Professors:
Over the course of his long career, legendary bluesman William “Big Bill” Broonzy (1893–1958) helped shape the trajectory of the genre, from its roots in the rural Mississippi River Delta, through its rise as a popular genre in the North, to its eventual international acclaim. Along the way, Broonzy adopted an evolving personal and professional identity, tailoring his self-presentation to the demands of the place and time. His remarkable professional fluidity mirrored the range of expectations from his audiences, whose ideas about race, national belonging, identity, and the blues were refracted through Broonzy as if through a prism. Kevin D. Greene argues that Broonzy's popular success testifies to his ability to navigate the cultural expectations of his different audiences. However, this constant reinvention came at a personal and professional cost. Using Broonzy's multifaceted career, Greene situates blues performance at the center of understanding African American self-presentation and racial identity in the first half of the twentieth century.
Through Broonzy's life and times, Greene assesses major themes and events in African American history, including the Great Migration, urbanization, and black expatriate encounters with European culture consumers. Drawing on a range of historical source materials as well as oral histories and personal archives held by Broonzy's son, Greene perceptively interrogates how notions of race, gender, and audience reception continue to shape concepts of folk culture and musical authenticity.
About the Author:
Kevin D. Greene is the Nina Bells Suggs Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi.
For more information about Kevin D. Greene, visit the Author Page.
Reviews:
"A wonderfully engaging and intellectually creative rendering of African American life, the city, and even U.S. foreign affairs through the life and music of Big Bill Broonzy."--Davarian L. Baldwin, author of Chicago's New Negroes
"By emphasizing Broonzy's successive (and successful) eras of self-reinvention, Greene persuasively positions this blues musician as a prism for understanding shifts in racial, national, and global identity in the twentieth century."--Joel Dinerstein, author of The Origins of Cool in Postwar America
Quick Links
Related Subjects
The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom Blues Musician "Big" Bill Broonzy Interviewed by Alan Lomax in 1947
Blues musician "Big" Bill Broonzy
(1893–1958) recalls the brutal racism that African American veterans of
World War I faced when they returned home from fighting for their
country in an interview conducted by Alan Lomax (1915–2002) in 1947.
https://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-musicians/big-bill-broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Major Works
Cover of Big Bill Blues
-
Big Bill Blues 2001
- House Rent Stomp 1999
- I Feel So Good 1998
- Remembering 1990
- 1955 London Sessions 1990
- Big Bill Broonzy In Concert 2002
- Mississippi River Blues 2001
- Legendary Blues Recordings: Big Bill Broonzy 2001
- Essential 2001
- Trouble In Mind 2000
- Post War Years Vol 2:1945-1949 2000
- Absolutely The Best 2000
- Chicago Calling 1999
- Warm Witty & Wise 1998
- Treat Me Right 1996
- Big Bill’s Blues 1996
- Just A Dream 1995
- I Feel So Good 1995
- Black Brown & White 1995
- Baby Please Don’t Go 1994
- Vol. 4-(1935-36) 1992
- 1935-47 1991
- Bill Broonzy Story 1960
- Historic Concert Recordings 1957
- Sings Folk Songs 1956
- 1955 London Sessions 1955
- Good Time Tonight 1930
- Young Big Bill Broonzy 1928-35 1928
- Do That Guitar Rag 1928-35 1928
William Lee Conley Broonzy: A Biography
by Anton Duck (SHS)
Anton Duck (SHS Researcher)
Broonzy’s life as a child was hard because he received only minimal schooling. He had to quit school to help his sharecropping family around the house. Before he moved to Arkansas, Broonzy learned how to play the fiddle from his uncle Jerry Belcher. At the age of fourteen, he started working for tips at country dances, picnics, and he played for the church (Broonzy). During the years 1912-1917, Broonzy worked part time as a preacher and violinist.
Then Broonzy served in the US Army during World War I. After his discharge, he returned back to Arkansas. This is the time when he decided that farming was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He wanted to make his living as a guitar player and singer. In 1924, Broonzy moved to Chicago to start his music career partly because of all the racism that was happening in the South. Under the guidance of Papa Charlie Jackson, Broonzy learned how to play the guitar. In the 1930’s Broonzy became known as one of the major artists on the Chicago Blues scene. During this time he performed with other top blues artist in Chicago– like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Jazz Gillum, Lonnie Johnson, and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. Also, while trying to make it in the music business, he worked as a janitor and maintenance man (Big Bill Broonzy).
In 1938 Broonzy performed at John Hammond’s famous Spiritual and Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was the first time that he had ever performed in front of a white audience. After the concert, people started calling him “Big Bill” Broonzy. At this time Broonzy received newfound fame as the father of Chicago blues.(Broonzy). He was one of the best known blues players and recorded over 260 blues songs including Feelin’ Low Down, Remember Big Bill, Make Me Getaway, and Big Bill Broonzy Sings Country Blues (Brewer 15). His recording career spanned five long decades as he traveled from Mississippi to Chicago and even to Europe, where he became well-known. There are forty-two of his albums still available (Cox 113).
After the arrival of artists like Muddy Waters and the playing of the electric guitar, Broonzy’s brand of blues was pushed aside. Rather than retire, he changed his style of music to folk blues. In 1951, Broonzy toured Europe where he performed standard blues, traditional folk tunes, and spirituals to appreciative audiences. The following year Broonzy returned to Europe with pianist Blind John Davis. He opened the doors for other American blues artists to tour there as well. In 1955, with the help of writer Yannick Bruynoghe, he told the story of his life in the book Big Bill Broonzy. This book was originally published in London. Big Bill Broonzy’s book was one of the first autobiographies by a blues man (Big Bill Broonzy). In 1957, William Lee Conley Broonzy was diagnosed with throat cancer. He continued to perform, although he had with great pain, until he died of throat cancer on August 15, 1958. In 1980, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame (Cox 113).
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/riesman/index.html
I Feel So Good
The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
by Bob Riesman
A
record by Big Bill Broonzy was the first blues record I purchased. I
got it in the spring of 1960 at my local music store in Ealing in West
London where I grew up. Bill’s record was in the Folk Music section,
alongside Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Leadbelly and
possibly Joan Baez. I listened to these other artists a year later. Bill
had toured in Europe quite a bit, and was a well-known name to me. I
loved his voice, his guitar playing and his handsome face. I was 15
years old, and had been playing guitar for four years. It wasn’t until
two years later that I discovered that in Ealing we were lucky enough to
have The Ealing Club, a crypt-like basement where Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies regularly performed (as did the fledgling Rolling Stones a
little later)—they had met and worked with Big Bill a few times, and
played some of his songs. I always felt close to Big Bill. He was my
first Blues crush. I felt I had sat at his feet. If I were to allow my
heart to tell the tale, I would say that I had actually sat at his feet,
and had heard the pain and joy of his life firsthand through his
wonderful songs.Bob Riesman’s book makes quite a bit of the way Big Bill reinvented himself, and possibly invented much of his past in a creative manner. I’m not known for my love of facts either. If a Blues, R&B or rock ’n’ roll career life-story is worth telling, it’s worth dressing up. I’m not an academic biographer. Riesman is that, and he gets close to the real truth about Big Bill’s life, but does so in a generous and non-judgemental way that actually deepens the impact and power of everything Bill did as a creative artist and musician who reserved the right to gild the lily. In particular, Bill’s family life, his years doing rough work, and his ability to reflect the stories and experiences of his contemporaries, all combine in this book to bring the terrible racial events and atrocities of those times back into relevance as historical facts rather than blues hearsay.
We’ve heard the songs, we’ve seen the face, we may even have listened to Big Bill himself telling interviewers like Alan Lomax how it really was, in his own inimitable and creative way. This book sets Bill’s extraordinary life and career in meticulously researched perspective. This giant of man—Big Bill Broonzy—deserves such a book, and Riesman is clearly the right man for the job. His affection for his subject is as evident as his respect. This is a compelling historical biography of an artist who sang right at the beginning of a musical era that later included rock ’n’ roll. If rock ’n’ roll and all its recent spawn can in any sense be regarded as art, or carries any social meaning, or transmits reflective or historical relevance to those who love it, this book will help to explain why.
Back before it all caught fire, we heard Big Bill, and we knew that music could tell the truth as well as entertain. Riesman makes it clear that such music might not relate the facts, but he never for a second doubts that Big Bill Broonzy knew the truth, even if he couldn’t resist dressing it up sometimes.
I toast the research. I toast the show business. I mourn the big African-American man who taught me that when you are a minstrel your main job is to entertain. The truth will follow.—Pete Townshend, December 2010
More About the Book
I Feel So Good is the definitive account of Bill Brooonzy’s life and music and features many rarely seen photos. Read more about the book. The author, Bob Riesman, is also co-editor of Chicago Folk: Images of the Sixties Music Scene: The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage. He produced and co-wrote the television documentary American Roots Music: Chicago, and was a contributor to Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Blues. He will be appearing at a number of events for the book.
“Big Bill Broonzy was one of the most influential African American blues artists in the 1930s and 1940s and the leading figure in the spread of blues to Europe in the 1950s. Up to now, much of his life has been shrouded in mystery and fable, largely created by Broonzy himself. Bob Riesman’s book lifts the veil and reveals a life that was every bit as interesting as the legend.”—David Evans, author The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to the Blues
Book details:
Bob Riesman
I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
©2011, 328 pages, 31 halftones
Cloth $27.50 ISBN: 9780226717456 • Buy print book at 20% discount.
E-book edition is forthcoming on our website and from other e-book sources.
For information on purchasing the book—from bookstores or here online—please go to the webpage for I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy.
See also:
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University of Chicago Press: 1427 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 USA | Voice: 773.702.7700 | Fax: 773.702.9756
Big Bill Broonzy
BIG BILL BROONZY
Big Bill Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley, June 26, 1903 [1][2] – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in writing songs that reflected his rural-to-urban experiences.[3]
Life and career
Early years
Born Lee Conley Bradley,[2]
he was one of the seventeen children of Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and
Mittie Belcher. The date and place of his birth are disputed. Broonzy
claimed to have been born in Scott, Mississippi, but a body of emerging research compiled by the blues historian Robert Reisman suggests that he was born in Jefferson County, Arkansas.
Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893, and many sources report that year,
but family records discovered after his death suggested that the year
was 1903.[4] Soon after his birth the family moved to an area near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where Bill spent his youth. He began playing music at an early age. At the age of 10 he made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals
and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. He and a friend, Louis
Carter, who played a homemade guitar, began performing at social and
church functions.[5]
These early performances included playing at "two-stages": picnics
where whites and blacks danced at the same event, but with different
stages for blacks and whites.[6]
On the understanding that he was born in 1898 rather than earlier
or later, sources suggest that in 1915, 17-year-old Broonzy was married
and working as a sharecropper.
He had given up playing the fiddle and had become a preacher. There is a
story that he was offered $50 and a new violin if he would play for
four days at a local venue. Before he could respond to the offer, his
wife took the money and spent it, so he had to play. In 1916 his crop
and stock were wiped out by drought. Broonzy went to work locally until
he was drafted into the Army in 1917.[7] He served for two years in Europe during the First World War. After his discharge from the Army in 1919, he returned to the Pine Bluff area, where he is reported to have been called a racial epithet
and told by a white man he knew before the war that he needed to "hurry
up and get his soldier uniform off and put on some overalls." He
immediately left Pine Bluff and moved to the Little Rock area. A year later, in 1920, he moved north to Chicago in search of opportunity.[8]
1920s
After arriving in Chicago, Broonzy switched from fiddle to guitar. He learned to play the guitar from the veteran minstrel and medicine show performer Papa Charlie Jackson, who began recording for Paramount Records in 1924.[9] Through the 1920s Broonzy worked at a string of odd jobs, including Pullman porter, cook, foundry worker and custodian, to supplement his income, but his main interest was music. He played regularly at rent parties
and social gatherings, steadily improving his guitar playing. During
this time he wrote one of his signature tunes, a solo guitar piece
called "Saturday Night Rub".[10]
Thanks to his association with Jackson, Broonzy was able to get an audition with Paramount executive J. Mayo Williams.
His initial test recordings, made with his friend John Thomas on
vocals, were rejected, but Broonzy persisted, and his second try, a few
months later, was more successful. His first record, "Big Bill's Blues",
backed with "House Rent Stomp", credited to Big Bill and Thomps
(Paramount 12656), was released in 1927.[11]
Although the recording was not well received, Paramount retained its
new talent and in the next few years released more records by Big Bill
and Thomps. The records sold poorly. Reviewers considered his style
immature and derivative.[12]
1930s
In 1930,
Paramount for the first time used Broonzy's full name on a recording,
"Station Blues" – albeit misspelled as "Big Bill Broomsley". Record
sales continued to be poor, and Broonzy was working at a grocery store.
He was picked up by Lester Melrose, who produced musical acts for various labels, including Champion Records and Gennett Records.
Harum Scarums, a trio comprising Broonzy, Georgia Tom and Mozelle Alderson, recorded the two-part "Alabama Scratch" in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records (Paramount 13054) in January 1931, and it was reported that it sounded "as if it was a real party."[13] Broonzy recorded several sides released in the spring of 1931 under the name Big Bill Johnson.[14] In March 1932 he traveled to New York City and began recording for the American Record Corporation on their line of less expensive labels (Melotone Records, Perfect Records and others).[10] These recordings sold better, and Broonzy was becoming better known. Back in Chicago he was working regularly in South Side clubs, and he toured with Memphis Minnie.[15]
In 1934 Broonzy moved to RCA Victor's subsidiary Bluebird Records
and began recording with the pianist Bob "Black Bob" Call. His fortunes
soon improved. With Call his music was evolving to a stronger R&B sound, and his singing sounded more assured and personal. In 1937, he began playing with the pianist Joshua Altheimer, recording and performing with a small instrumental group, including "traps" (drums), double bass and one or more melody instruments (horns or harmonica or both). In March 1938 he began recording for Vocalion Records.[16]
Broonzy's reputation grew. In 1938 he was asked to fill in for the recently deceased Robert Johnson at the "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall, produced by John H. Hammond.[17] He also appeared in the 1939 concert at the same venue.[5] His success led him in the same year to a small role in Swingin' the Dream, Gilbert Seldes's jazz adaptation of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, set in New Orleans in 1890 and featuring, among others, Louis Armstrong as Bottom and Maxine Sullivan as Titania, with the Benny Goodman sextet.
Broonzy's recorded output through the 1930s only partially reflects his importance to Chicago blues. His half-brother, Washboard Sam, and his friends Jazz Gillum and Tampa Red
also recorded for Bluebird. Broonzy was credited as the composer of
many of their most popular recordings of that time. He reportedly played
guitar on most of Washboard Sam's tracks. Because of his exclusive
arrangements with his record label, Broonzy was careful to allow his
name to appear on these artists' records only as a composer.[16]
1940s
Broonzy
expanded his work during the 1940s as he honed his songwriting skills,
which showed a knack for appealing to his more sophisticated city
audience as well as people that shared his country roots. His work in
this period shows he performed across a wider musical spectrum than
almost any other bluesman before or since, including in his repertoire ragtime, hokum blues, country blues, urban blues, jazz-tinged songs, folk songs and spirituals.
After World War II, Broonzy recorded songs that were the bridge that
allowed many younger musicians to cross over to the future of the blues:
the electric blues of postwar Chicago. His 1945 recordings of "Where
the Blues Began", with Big Maceo on piano and Buster Bennett on sax, and
"Martha Blues", with Memphis Slim on piano, clearly showed the way
forward. One of his best-known songs, "Key to the Highway", appeared at this time. When the second American Federation of Musicians strike ended in 1948, Broonzy was signed by Mercury Records.[18]
In 1949, Broonzy became part of a touring folk music revue, I Come for to Sing, formed by Win Stracke, which also included Studs Terkel and Lawrence Lane. Terkel called him the key figure in the group. The revue had some success thanks to the emerging folk revival. When the revue played at Iowa State University in Ames,
Broonzy met a local couple, Leonard and Lillian Feinberg, who found him
a custodial job at Iowa State when a doctor ordered Broonzy to
discontinue touring later that year. He remained in Ames until 1951,
when he resumed touring.[19]
1950s
.jpg)
EP cover (Melodisc EPM7-65), released in the UK in 1956, with an ad for
Broonzy's autobiography,
Big Bill Blues
He left Chicago in 1950 to work as a janitor at Iowa State having performed there and established relationships with a likely view to develop his own influence and craft.[20] After his return to performing, the exposure from I Come for to Sing made it possible for Broonzy to tour Europe in 1951. Here he was greeted with standing ovations and critical praise wherever he played.[21] The tour marked a turning point in his fortunes, and when he returned to the United States he was a featured act with many prominent folk artists, such as Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. From 1953 on, his financial position became more secure, and he was able to live well on his earnings from music. He returned to his solo folk-blues roots and travelled and recorded extensively.[18] Broonzy's numerous performances during the 1950s in British folk and jazz clubs were a significant influence on British audiences' understanding of the blues[22] and bolstered the nascent British folk revival and early blues scene. Many British musicians on the folk scene, such as Bert Jansch, cited him as an important influence.[23] John Lennon, of the Beatles, also cited Broonzy as an important early influence.[24]
While in the Netherlands,
Broonzy met and became romantically involved with a Dutch woman, Pim
van Isveldt. Together they had a child, Michael, who still lives in
Amsterdam.[25][26]
In 1953, Vera (King) Morkovin and Studs Terkel took Broonzy to Circle Pines Center, a cooperative year-round camp in Delton, Michigan, where he was employed as the summer camp cook. He worked there in the summer from 1953 to 1956. On July 4, 1954, Pete Seeger
travelled to Circle Pines and gave a concert with Broonzy on the
farmhouse lawn, which was recorded by Seeger for the new fine-arts radio
station in Chicago, WFMT-FM.[27]
In 1955, with the assistance of the Belgian writer Yannick Bruynoghe, Broonzy published his autobiography, Big Bill Blues.[5] He toured worldwide, travelling to Africa, South America, the Pacific region and across Europe into early 1956. In 1957 Broonzy was one of the founding faculty members of the Old Town School of Folk Music. On the school's opening night, December 1, he taught a class, "The Glory of Love".[28]
Illness and death
By 1958 Broonzy was suffering from throat cancer. He died on August 14 or 15, 1958 (sources vary on the precise date), and is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, in Blue Island, Illinois.[29][30]
Style and influence
Broonzy's influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music, hokum, and country blues he heard growing up and the styles of his contemporaries, including Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these influences into his own style of the blues, which foreshadowed the postwar Chicago blues, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.[5]
Although he had been a pioneer of the Chicago blues style and had
employed electric instruments as early as 1942, white audiences in the
1950s wanted to hear him playing his earlier songs accompanied only by
his own acoustic guitar, which they considered to be more authentic.
He portrayed the discrimination against black Americans in the 1930s in his song "Black, Brown and White".[31]
The song has been used globally in education about racism, but in the
late 1990s its inclusion in antiracism education at a school in Greater Manchester, England,
led pupils to taunt the school's only black pupil with the song's
chorus, "If you're white, that's all right, if you're brown, stick
around, but if you're black, oh brother get back, get back, get back".
The national media reported that the problem became so bad that the
nine-year-old boy was withdrawn from the school by his mother. The song
had already been adopted by the National Front, a far-right British political party which peaked in popularity in the 1970s and opposed nonwhite immigration to Britain.[32]
A considerable part of Broonzy's early ARC/CBS recordings has
been reissued in anthologies by CBS-Sony, and other earlier recordings
have been collected on blues reissue labels, as have his European and
Chicago recordings of the 1950s. The Smithsonian's Folkways Records has also released several albums featuring Broonzy.
In 1980, he was inducted into the first class of the Blues Hall of Fame,
along with 20 other of the world's greatest blues legends. In 2007, he
was inducted into the first class of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame,
along with 11 other musical greats, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Gene Autry, and Lawrence Welk.
Broonzy as an acoustic guitar player inspired Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher,[33] Ben Taylor,[34] and Steve Howe.[35]
In the September 2007 issue of Q Magazine, Ronnie Wood, of the Rolling Stones,
cited Broonzy's track "Guitar Shuffle" as his favorite guitar music.
Wood remarked, "It was one of the first tracks I learnt to play, but
even to this day I can't play it exactly right."
Eric Clapton
has cited Broonzy as a major inspiration, commenting that Broonzy
"became like a role model for me, in terms of how to play the acoustic
guitar."[36] Clapton featured Broonzy's song "Hey Hey" on his album Unplugged. The Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs includes their recording of "Key to the Highway".
Another musician heavily influenced by Broonzy was Jerry Garcia,
who upon hearing a recording of Broonzy's blues playing decided to
exchange an accordion he received on his 15th birthday for an electric
guitar.[37] Garcia would later co-found The Grateful Dead,
who frequently performed a number of songs which Broonzy had recorded
decades earlier, including "C.C. Rider" and "Goin' Down the Road Feelin'
Bad".[38]
Broonzy's influence on the roots rock band the Blasters is apparent. In 2014, the Blasters' founders Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin, as a duo, released the album Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy. Dave Alvin commented, "We're brothers, we argue sometimes, but one thing we never argue about is
Big Bill Broonzy."[39]
Big Bill Broonzy."[39]
In the benediction at the 2009 inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery paraphrased Broonzy's song "Black, Brown and White Blues".[40]
As part of the PopUp Archive project, in collaboration with the WFMT network, the Chicago History Museum, and the Library of Congress, an hour-long interview of Broonzy, recorded on September 13, 1955, by Studs Terkel
was made available on-line. The interview includes reflections on his
life and on the blues tradition, a performance of one of his most famous
songs, "Albert," and performances of "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad"
and other classics.[41]
Discography
Between
1927 and 1942, Broonzy recorded 224 songs, which makes him the second
most prolific blues recording artist during that period.[42] These were released before blues records were tracked by recording industry trade magazines. By the time Billboard magazine instituted its "race music" charts in October 1942, Broonzy's recordings were less popular, and none appeared in the charts.[43]
Selected singles
Many
of Broonzy's singles were issued by more than one record company,
sometimes under different names. Additional versions of some songs were
also released. These are marked with a superscript plus sign.
| Date | Title | Label & Cat. no. | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1927 | "Big Bill's Blues" | Paramount 12656+ | as Big Bill and Thomps |
| "House Rent Stomp" | Paramount 12656 | as Big Bill and Thomps | |
| 1930 | "Station Blues" | Paramount 13084 | as Big Bill Broomsley |
| "Saturday Night Rub" | Perfect 147+ | as Famous Hokum Boys | |
| "I Can't Be Satisfied" | Perfect 157 | as Sammy Sampson | |
| 1932 | "Mistreatin' Mama" | Champion 16396+ | as Big Bill Johnson |
| 1934 | "At the Break of Day" | Bluebird 5571+ | |
| "C. C. Rider" | Melotone 13311+ | ||
| 1935 | "Midnight Special" | Vocalion 03004 | as State Street Boys |
| "Bricks in My Pillow" | ARC 6–03–62 | ||
| 1936 | "Matchbox Blues" | ARC 6–05–56+ | |
| 1937 | "Mean Old World" | Melotone 7–07–64+ | |
| 1937 | "Louise Louise Blues" | Vocalion 03075+ | |
| 1938 | "New Shake 'Em on Down" | Vocalion 04149+ | electric guitar by George Barnes |
| "Night Time Is the Right Time No. 2" | Vocalion 04149+ | electric guitar by George Barnes | |
| 1939 | "Just a Dream" | Vocalion 04706+ | |
| "Too Many Drivers" | Vocalion 05096 | ||
| 1940 | "You Better Cut That Out" | Okeh 05919 | |
| "Lonesome Road Blues" | Okeh 06031 | ||
| "Rockin' Chair Blues" | Okeh 06116+ | ||
| 1941 | "All By Myself" | Okeh 06427+ | |
| "Key to the Highway" | Okeh 06242+ | ||
| "Wee Wee Hours" | Okeh 06552 | ||
| "I Feel So Good" | Okeh 06688+ | ||
| 1942 | "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town" | Okeh 06651 | as Big Bill & His Chicago 5 |
| 1945 | "Please Believe Me" | Hub 3003-A (HU418B) | as Little Sam, blues vocalist, with Don Byas Quartet |
| 1945 | "Why Did You Do That To Me" | Hub 3003-B (HU 419B) | as Little Sam, blues vocalist, with Don Byas Quartet |
| 1951 | "Hey Hey" | Mercury 8271 |
Broonzy also appeared as a sideman on recordings by Lil Green, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Washboard Sam, Jazz Gillum and other Bluebird Records artists.[44]
Albums
- Big Bill Broonzy and Washboard Sam (1953)
- Big Bill Broonzy and Roosevelt Sykes (DVD, recorded 1956)
- His Story (Folkways Records, 1957)[45]
- Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Folkways Records, 1959)
- Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs (Smithsonian Folkways, 1989)
- Best of the Blues Tradition (1991)
- Do That Guitar Rag (1928–1935) (1991)
- Trouble in Mind (Smithsonian Folkways, 2000)
- Broonzy Volume 2: 1945–1949: The Post War Years (2000)
- Big Bill Broonzy in Concert (2002)
- Big Bill Broonzy on Tour in Britain: Live in England & Scotland (2002)
- Big Bill Blues: His 23 Greatest Songs 1927–42 (2004)
- Get Back (2004)
- Big Bill Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 (2006)
- Keys to the Blues (2009)
References
His full given name was most likely Lee Conley Bradley.
Further reading
- Riesman, Bob (2011). I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-71745-6. See the website for the book.
External links
- Big Bill Broonzy CD reissue discography
- Broonzy.com series of tribute pages including bio, discography, sound clips
- Big Bill Broonzy: Interviews and performances with Studs Terkel at Smithsonian Folkways
- Works by or about Big Bill Broonzy in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Big Bill Broonzy research at the Mississippi Blues Trail
THE
MUSIC OF BIG BILL BROONZY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH BIG BILL BROONZY:
