London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1955.
Before authors Sam Charters and Paul Oliver published their pioneering histories of the blues, bluesman Big Bill Broonzy took it upon himself to do a book about the blues and the world it came from, fleshed out by colorful, entertaining tales about himself and his friends who also sang the blues. Broonzy was an already an ambassador who had taken the blues to new audiences in America and Europe. He saw that people wanted and needed to know more about the music and the culture, and with the help of Belgian blues enthusiasts Yannick and Margo Bruynoghe, he started work on Big Bill Blues in the early ‘50s, not long after he had improved his reading and writing skills enough to do so while holding a janitorial job at Iowa State. Although the book was subtitled William Broonzy’s Story as told to Yannick Bruynoghe in the original and several of the subsequent editions, Broonzy actually did write the book, sending handwritten pages to the Bruynoghes. The young couple read the pages aloud to one another in an attempt to understand the spellings and phrases Broonzy used, and compiled their edited versions into a book which was first published in London in 1955. Broonzy described African American life in Mississippi and Chicago and his own career as a blues singer and, in a fascinating “My Friends” chapter, he told stories of Sleepy John Estes, Big Maceo, Tampa Red, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, Memphis Minnie, Lil Green, Lonnie Johnson, Doctor Clayton, and several other legendary figures. For years these glimpses were the only published biographies on some artists. Broonzy was not the most factual of historians – even his Mississippi origins have now been disproved, and some dates and incidents are questionable, at best – but his warmth, humor, and inside knowledge and experience still make his accounts of the blues among the most valuable ever published. In the Winter 1982/83 issue of Living Blues magazine, Yannick Bruynoghe published further information and photos, based on a trip to visit Broonzy in Chicago in 1957, including some of Bill’s writings that did not appear in the book. Researcher Bob Riesman has since done a book that unravels Broonzy’s personal history (including his real name, Lee Conley Bradley) and presents an insightful appreciation of Big Bill’s many accomplishments.
As Broonzy himself wrote: “As for me, I would love to pick up a book and read a story about Big Bill Broonzy. I wouldn’t care if it’s just a story about how I live or how drunk I was the last time that they saw Big Bill. I would enjoy reading it because it could be true.”
–Jim O’Neal
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