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Big Bill Broonzy
Albums
![Southern Blues [Quadromania]](/cache/JS/no/130x130_no_photo_big.jpg)
One of the most skilled of the blues guitarists and singers who were active during the 1930s and '40s, Big Bill Broonzy had a fascinating life [more]
- Member Price: $24.98
Big Bill Broonzy's absorption of the urbanized Chicago blues style was essentially complete by the time of the 1934-35 recordings assembled here. The [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $15.28
This is an odd and charming collection of private recordings by Big Bill Broonzy, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, probably done at small parties in hotel rooms, or [more]
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- Member Price: $14.38
- List Price: $19.98
- Member Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $4.98
- List Price: $20.98
- Member Price: $18.88
Appearances
This CD is a hodgepodge sampling of blues records featuring mostly pre-war slide guitarists ranging from the simplicity of Barbecue Bob (who was much [more]
- List Price: $16.99
- Member Price: $11.98
The critics rave!
To commemorate the end of the century, Sony Music assembled the gargantuan 26-disc box set Sony Music 100 Years: Soundtrack for a Century. The title [more]
- Member Price: $329.98
Big Bill Broonzy's absorption of the urbanized Chicago blues style was essentially complete by the time of the 1934-35 recordings assembled here. The [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $15.28
This LP was the very first release by the Stash label and, as with its first dozen or so collections, it features vintage material that deals with illicit [more]
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- Member Price: $14.38
The State Street Swingers were a primitive but swinging group formed in the mold of the more successful Harlem Hamfats in the mid-'30s. Their seven recording sessions (resulting [more]
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- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $15.28
This CD has the final 20 recordings by the good-time hokum/blues singer Lil Johnson, including eight performances that were [more]
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- Member Price: $15.28
Four blues singers of whom very little is known are featured on this CD. Billie McKenzie sings in a friendly and mildly sexy double-entendre style [more]
- List Price: $16.98
- Member Price: $15.28
![Every Day I Have the Blues [Goldies Box]](/cache/JS/e1/130x130_on-sale_e12300f6sv4.png)
This three-disc set features a total of 42 classic blues recordings, some going back to the 1920s. There's no rhyme or reason to the set, except that all [more]
- List Price: $35.94
- Member Price: $32.35
Biography
- Born Jun 26th 1893 in Scott, MS
- Died Aug 15th 1958 in Chicago, IL
- Styles
- Pre-War Blues
- Instrument(s)
In terms of his musical skill, the sheer size of his repertoire, the length and variety of his career and his influence on contemporaries and musicians who would follow, Big Bill Broonzy is among a select few of the most important figures in recorded blues history. Among his hundreds of titles are standards like "All by Myself" and "Key to the Highway." In this country he was instrumental in the growth of the Chicago Blues sound, and his travels abroad rank him as one of the leading blues ambassadors.
Literally born on the banks of the Mississippi, he was one of a family of 17 who learned to fiddle on a homemade instrument. Taught by his uncle, he was performing by age ten at social functions and in church. After brief stints on the pulpit and in the Army, he moved to Chicago where he switched his attention from violin to guitar, playing with elders like Papa Charlie Jackson. Broonzy began his recording career with Paramount in 1927. In the early '30s he waxed some brilliant blues and hokum and worked Chicago and the road with great players like pianist Black Bob, guitarist Will Weldon and Memphis Minnie.
During the Depression years Big Bill Broonzy continued full steam ahead, doing some acrobatic label-hopping (Paramount to Bluebird to Columbia to Okeh!). In addition to solo efforts, he contributed his muscular guitar licks to recordings by Bumble Bee Slim, {John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson} and others who were forging a powerful new Chicago sound.
In 1938, Broonzy was at Carnegie Hall (ostensibly filling in for the fallen Robert Johnson) for John Hammond's revolutionary Sprirtuals to Swing Series. The following year he appeared with Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong in George Seldes's film production Swingin' the Dream. After his initial brush with the East Coast cognoscenti, however, Broonzy spent a good part of the early '40s barnstorming the South with Lil Green's road show or kicking back in Chicago with Memphis Slim.
He continued alternating stints in Chicago and New York with coast-to-coast road work until 1951 when live performances and recording dates overseas earned him considerable notoriety in Europe and led to worldwide touring. Back in the States he recorded for Chess, Columbia and Folkways, working with a spectrum of artists from Blind John Davis to Pete Seeger. In 1955, -Big Bill Blues, his life as told to Danish writer Yannick Bruynoghe, was published.
In 1957, after one more British tour, the pace began to catch up with Broonzy. He spent the last year of his life in and out of hospitals and succumbed to cancer in 1958. He survives though; not only in his music, but in the remembrances of people who knew him...from Muddy Waters to Studs Terkel. A gentle giant they say...tough enough to survive the blues world...but not so tough he wouldn't give a struggling young musician the shirt off his back. His music, of course, is absolutely basic to the blues experience, and was celebrated in 1999 with the release of the three-disc retrospective The Bill Broonzy Story. ~ Steve James, All Music Guide
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