Big Bill Broonzy

it?

Well, Big Bill Broonzy, that was almost pre my association with Mick because my sister, she was into a folk and blues and she was five years older than me.

And we kind of really discovered Big Bill Bruinsy together.

My dad used to say, oh, is that that bloody Big Bill Bruinsy

You might recall a couple of weeks back we, we played a track of, uh, Chris Barber with Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

But, uh, most of these, uh, performers were generally unknown to the British public at that stage and, uh, but luckily Barber was at the height of his popularity, uh, and so, uh, he decided to finance these tours himself and there were performers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Bill Broonzy, Brother John Sellers, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann and Jim- Jimmy Cotton.

And it's, uh, pleasing to note that, uh, most of these tours turned out to be a financial as well as a cultural and a critical success.

Then 1958, uh, Barber toured the blues harmonica player Sonny Terry and his, uh, musical partner on guitar and vocals Brownie McGhee and this tour was a, uh, phenomenal success and unlike previous tours, uh, was, uh, properly recorded.

He liked the Americans who came from the Muddy Waters vein of blues, the rough and ready, Lightning Hopkins, the electric guitar-based stuff.

But he also loved the country rock blues formats, and Lightning Slim and Magic Sam and Big Bill Broonzy was one of the people I remember going to see once.

He came from that tradition, although it had been very much watered down and become a sort of acceptable folk sort of thing that he was doing.

But yeah, Ashley was into that, but he also loved rock and roll.

Yeah.

Big Bill Broonzy was right, you know.

It's all folk music.

Horses can't play it, so.

The album was actually re-released again five years later under the name Hallelujah, I Love Her, which played off its intense gospel flavor.

In fact, after hearing the record, Mississippi bluesman Big Bill Broonzy even famously said of Charles, "He's mixing the blues with spirituals, and that ain't right." If you're just tuning in, we're just getting started.

Today we've got an hour-long look at the jazz roots of rhythm and blues.

Well, it's interesting because rhythm and blues really is kind of a combination of blues and jazz in a lot of ways.

Blind John Davis passed away in 1985 at the age of 71 in Chicago from natural causes.

He was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist who was famous for doing recordings by legends like Big Bill Broonzy and also Tampa Red.

He was also the first blues pianist to tour Europe.

Carmen Cavallaro passed away in 1989 at the age of 76 from cancer and also pneumonia in Columbus, Ohio.

Well, there we are.

Um, it's been covered by over 50 artists, including Bob Marley, Janis Ian, David Soul, Louis Armstrong, and Big Bill Broonzy.

But the version that I like is by Mumford & Sons with the Old Crow Medicine Show, and this is This Train is Bound for Glory.

Right.

It was, I was very fortunate to have parents who, uh, who grew up in the '50s, so rock and roll.

My dad was a blues fan, so he had old, those old Library of Congress EPs of Big Bill Broonzy and Lead Belly and people like that, and then he was a massive Stones fan as well, so it was the Stones, Dylan, anything he thought kind of rock and roll really, and so I was extraordinarily lucky.

My mom was a music teacher, so she listened to much more harmonic stuff, so Beach Boys, um, Mamas and The Papas.

Uh, I remember her getting a K-Tel compilation of Phil Spector, so I was extraordinarily lucky, um, in the way I grew up.