Broonzy

The concert, and a second instalment held on Christmas Eve the following year, were representative of his inclusive taste, featuring the country blues performers Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry, the "blues shouter" Big Joe Turner, the gospel singing of the Golden Gate Quartet and the boogie woogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons alongside the bands of Count Basie and Benny Goodman and many others.

Jazz gets a history 2011

The concert, and a second instalment held on Christmas Eve the following year, were representative of his inclusive taste, featuring the country blues performers Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry, the "blues shouter" Big Joe Turner, the gospel singing of the Golden Gate Quartet and the boogie woogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons alongside the bands of Count Basie and Benny Goodman and many others.

Jazz gets a history 2011

So why did Big Bill Broonzy never achieve the status of a Muddy Waters or Howling Wolf?

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

Actually, Lowery was almost certainly riffing on the old Big Bill Broonzy blues song, “Black, Brown and White”:

Matthew Yglesias » Requests We Can Believe In 2009

Like many an itinerant bluesman, Big Bill Broonzy scattered more than musical notes as he traveled, and at the end of this otherwise meticulously researched and fact-filled biography, Bob Riesman throws up his hands and declares that "a full reckoning of the number and identities of Big Bill Broonzy's children . . . remains, for now, an unfinished task."

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

Yannick and Margo Bruynoghe Collection Broonzy performing in a Brussels cabaret in a still from the 17-minute documentary 'Low Light and Blue Smoke' 1956.

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

Where Big Bill Broonzy continues to live is in the effect that he had on others.

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

Big Bill Broonzy was one of the many black musicians who grew up with nothing, changed the lives of everyone he came in contact with and disappeared too soon, dying of lung cancer at the age of 60.

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

When producer and talent scout John Hammond realized that he couldn't sign the late Robert Johnson for a blockbuster concert in New York, he found another "primitive blues singer," Big Bill Broonzy.

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011

By this time in his career, Big Bill Broonzy had played all over the world at rent parties and Saturday night fish fries and in venues as swank as Carnegie Hall and the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and he was known for the planning he put into every appearance.

The Ghost in Rock 'n' Roll David Kirby 2011