| Big Bill Broonzy |
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During this time, Broonzy usually played South Side clubs, and also toured with Memphis Minnie during the 1930s . When the second American Federation Of Musicians strike ended in 1948, Broonzy was picked up by the Mercury Records label, for whom he made a handful of records through 1951. After that, Broonzy returned to his solo folk-blues roots, and traveled extensively (and recorded) across Europe into early 1956. Although he had been a pioneer of the Chicago Blues style and had employed electric instruments as early as 1942 , his new, white audiences wanted to hear him playing his earliest songs unaccompanied on acoustic guitar, considering those to be more "authentic". Broonzy returned to Chicago in 1956 and continued to perform, though his health was beginning to fail; he would eventually die of throat cancer in 1958, and is buried in Chicago. During his folk-blues period, he recorded with Pete Seeger , Sonny Terry , Brownie McGhee , and Leadbelly . A considerable portion of his early ARC/CBS recordings have been reissued in anthology collections by CBS-Sony; as well, other earlier recordings have been collected on blues reissue labels, as have his later European and Chicago recordings of the fifties. Since Broonzy was never a spectacular electric guitarist in the manner of others of his early-fifties contemporaries, he is not as well known as others of that period, and was not extensively covered during the "British Blues Revival" of the sixties; however, he did gain some popularity, with "Key to the Highway" featured on Derek And The Dominos ' '' Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs ''. He was an acclaimed acoustic guitar player, and a major source of inspiration to men like Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim . Big Bill Broonzy recorded over 350 compositions. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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