Bob Riesman, “I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

Big Bill Broonzy was a master storyteller. From his name, he was born Lee Conly Bradley, to his age, he typically added a decade, to the facts of his growing up in the pre-civil rights segregated South (not that he didn’t, he simply embellished a lot) Bill could spin a yarn. As Bob Riesman tells it in I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy (University of Chicago, 2011) Bill mythologized his life in order to tell a story that was larger than his own, the story of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bill told his story through songs–he recorded hundreds of them in his more than three decade career–some of which, like “Key to the Highway” and “Black, Brown, and White Blues,” remain popular and relevant to this day. But he also told his story through the many candid conversations he had with fellow blues travelers that were recorded by the likes of Studs Terkel, Alan Lomox, and Win Stracke. The Belgian husband and wife team of Yannick and Margo Bruynoghe compiled and edited a lengthy series of Bill’s own writings into an autobiography, Big Bill Blues. All-in-all, Big Bill Broonzy stands as one of the giants of American blues and jazz. He played with and/or influenced the blues of many musicians including, but not limited to: Roosevelt Sykes, Washboard Sam, Lil Green, Muddy Waters, Big Maceo Merriweather, Sonny Boy Williamson, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend. Big Bill himself may not be lodged in the memories of most people these days, but his music and stories surely are.

Bob Riesman is coeditor of Chicago Folk: Images of the Sixties Music Scene: The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage. He produced and cowrote the television documentary American “Roots Music: Chicago” and was a contributor to Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Blues.

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