Of all the musicians who pioneered the Chicago blues, none was more important than Big Bill Broonzy. Broonzy incorporated the spirituals and folk songs of the Deep South into urban blues, serving as a link between the old and new. His guitar-driven, rhythmic music set the tone for the Chicago blues of the post-World War II era.
William Lee Conley Broonzy was born in June 1893, near Scott, Mississippi. He grew up in Arkansas, where he learned to play a homemade cigar-box fiddle under his uncle’s guidance and picked up old folk songs from relatives. Broonzy preached for a time, and worked as a farmhand and on road gangs in Arkansas. He served in the army toward the end of World War I and moved to Chicago in 1920, where he befriended several blues musicians and began to learn guitar. Although a newcomer to the instrument, Broonzy quickly became an accomplished guitarist. He made his first recordings in 1926 for Paramount under the name Big Bill—he stood 6 feet 6 inches and weighed over 200 pounds—to distinguish him from another musician named Bill. His first hits were “Big Bill Blues” and “House Rent Stomp.”
By 1930, Broonzy was recording extensively and had developed a distinctive guitar style, choking his notes and hammering on the strings to a swinging beat. Although his 1930s recordings had a jazzy sound and included a small band accompaniment, they still had a hint of country-style. He wrote more than 300 tunes, including the blues standard “Key to the Highway,” but received little compensation from dishonest producers. Some of his numbers were protest songs, including “If You’re Black, Get Back” and “Just a Dream.”
Big Bill Broonzy’s unmistakable tenor voice has been described as one of the most supple and expressive in blues. Combining the resonance of a field holler with the streetwise, confident authority of a city dweller, it made him the best-selling black male blues singer of the late 1930s. He toured with MEMPHIS MINNIE in the 1930s and worked with many other major blues figures, including MEMPHIS SLIM, Sonny Boy WILLIAMSON, Washboard Sam, and Jazz Gillum. Broonzy’s big break came in December 1938 when he performed in John Hammond’s “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, replacing the deceased Robert Johnson. His hits included “Trucking Little Woman” (1938), “Looking Up at Down” (1940), “When I Been Drinking” and “All by Myself” (both 1941).
Broonzy was known as much for his wisdom, dignity and warmth as for his inspiring musicianship. After World War II, Broonzy continued to perform on the Chicago club scene. He nurtured Muddy WATERS career when Waters first arrived in Chicago, and Waters repaid him by recording a tribute album after Broonzy’s death. Broonzy was the classic hardworking musician, continuously adapting to change. He worked in a foundry and held various other jobs to make ends meet, including working as a Pullman porter, farmer, and janitor at Iowa State University.
In the late 1940s, Broonzy exchanged his urban electric guitar for a more countrified acoustic one and became a folk-blues singer, adopting an old-time style that pleased the Greenwich Village folk crowd. Broonzy enjoyed a huge following in Great Britain, France, and Belgium. He first went to Europe in 1951 and returned regularly until his death in August 1958. Although some criticised his later career as pandering to white tastes, Broonzy’s European tours did much to win a whole new audience for the blues.
Stan Hieronymus
SEE ALSO:
FURTHER READING
Broonzy, William, with Yannick Bruynoghe. Big Bill Blues: William Broonzy’s Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992);
Lomax, Alan. The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Blues in the Mississippi Night; Do That Guitar Rag; Good Times Tonight; The Young Big Bill Broonzy 1928–35.