Big Bill Broonzy - Hey Hey

Despite years of research, the details of William Lee Conley Broonzy's birth date remain problematic. He may have been born on 26 June 1893 - the date of birth he often gave - or according to Bill's twin sister Laney, it may have been in 1898. Laney claimed to have documents to prove that. However, definitive research undertaken by Bob Reisman (see www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com search book "I Feel So Good") has changed the picture.

Bill often regaled audiences with tales of his birth on 26 June 1893 and that of his twin sister Laney and of his father's response to being told he had twins to care for. He claimed to have served in the US Army in France from 1918 - 1919 and to have been invited by a record company to travel to the Delta following a major flood in 1927: Turns out, that a good deal of this was fiction at worst and faction at best.

Robert Reisman's impeccable research suggests a birth date for Bill of 26th June 1903 (and in Jefferson County, Arkansas, not Scott Mississippi as previously suggested). Laney was not a twin at all but four years older than Bill. (She was born in 1898).

Bill spoke and sang about experiences in the US army and of his return from France to Arkansas/Mississippi. It turns out though, that the reported army experience was Bill's factional description of an amalgam of the stories told by black soldiers returning from overseas. A trip Bill claimed to have made to Mississippi in 1927 to the flooding was similarly untrue, but was a factional account into which Bill inserted himself.

Broonzy is/was not even his real name. He was born into the world with the name Lee Conly (note spelling) Bradley; and so it goes on.

Bill's father Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and his mother, Mittie Belcher had both been born into slavery and Bill was one of seventeen children. His first instrument was a violin which he learned to play with some tuition from his uncle, his mother's brother, Jerry Belcher. Bob Reisman suggests that there is little evidence that Jerry Belcher existed.

In Arkansas, the young Bill (Lee) worked as a violinist in local churches at the same time as working as a farm hand. He also worked as a country fiddler and local parties and picnics around Scott Mississippi. Between 1912 and 1917, Bill (Lee) worked as an itinerant preacher in and around Pine Bluff. It is not known why he changed his name.

Later, he worked in clubs around Little Rock. In about 1924, Big Bill moved to Chicago Illinois, where as a fiddle player he played occasional gigs with Papa Charlie Jackson. During this time he learned to play guitar and subsequently accompanied many blues singers, both in live performance and on record. Bill made his first recordings in 1927 (just named Big Bill) and the 1930 census records him as living in Chicago and (working as a labourer in a foundry) and his name was recorded as 'Willie Lee Broonsey' aged 28. He was living with his wife Annie (25) and his son Ellis (6).

Over the years, Big Bill became an accomplished performer in his own right. Through the 1930s he was a significant mover in founding the small group blues (singer, guitar, piano, bass drums) sound that typified Chicago bues.

On 23 December, 1938, Big Bill was one of the principal solo performers in the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert held at the Carnegie Hall in New York City. In the programme for that performance, Broonzy was identified in the programme only as "Big Bill" (he did not become known as Big Bill Broonzy until much later in his career) and as Willie Broonzy. He was described as:

"...the best-selling blues singer on Vocalion's 'race' records, which is the musical trade designation for American Negro music that is so good that only the Negro people can be expected to buy it."

The programme recorded that the Carnegie Hall concert "will be his first appearance before a white audience".

Big Bill was a stand-in for Robert Johnson, who had been murdered in Mississippi in August that year. Hammond heard about Johnson's death just a week before the concert was due to take place. According to John Sebastian (1939) Big Bill bought a new pair of shoes and travelled to New York by bus for the concert. Where he travelled from is, however, left dangling. The inference of the text is that it was from Arkansas, but as noted above, by by late 1938 Bill was established as a session man and band leader, and as a solo performer in Chicago. Within weeks of the 1938 concert Bill was recording with small groups in a studio in the windy city.

In the 1938 programme, Big Bill performed (accompanied by boogie pianist Albert Ammons) "It Was Just a Dream" which had the audience rocking with laughter at the lines,

"Dreamed I was in the White House, sittin' in the president's chair.
I dreamed he's shaking my hand, said "Bill, I'm glad you're here".
But that was just a dream. What a dream I had on my mind.
And when I woke up, not a chair could I find"

Lonnie Johnson - Careless Love

Alfonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970), was a pioneering Blues and Jazz guitarist and banjoist. He started playing in cafes in New Orleans and in 1917 he traveled in Europe, playing in revues and briefly with Will Marion Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra. When he returned home to New Orleans in 1918 he discovered that his entire family had been killed by a flu epidemic except for one brother. He and his surviving brother, James "Steady Roll" Johnson moved to St. Louis in 1920 where Lonnie played with Charlie Creath's Jazz-O-Maniacs and with Fate Marable in their Mississippi riverboat bands. In 1925 Johnson married Blues singer Mary Johnson and won a Blues contest sponsored by the Okeh record company. Part of the prize was a recording deal with the company. Throughout the rest of the 1920s he recorded with a variety of bands and musicians, including Eddie Lang, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. In the 1930s Johnson moved to Cleveland, Ohio and worked with the Putney Dandridge Orchestra, and then in a tire factory and steel mill. In 1937 he moved back to Chicago and played with Johnny Dodds, and Jimmie Noone. Johnson continued to play for the rest of his life, but was often forced to leave the music business for periods to make a living. In 1963 he once again appeared briefly with Duke Ellington.

Clara Smith - Don't Advertise Your Man

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

One of the legendary unrelated Smith singers of the 1920s, Clara Smith was never on Bessie's level or as significant as Mamie but she had something of her own to offer. She began working on the theatre circuit and in vaudeville around 1910, learning her craft during the next 13 years while traveling throughout the South. In 1923 Clara Smith came to New York and she recorded steadily for Columbia through 1932, cutting 122 songs often with the backing of top musicians (especially after 1925) including Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins and James P. Johnson (in 1929). Plus she recorded two vocal duets with Bessie Smith and four with Lonnie Johnson. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners" although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors. She performed throughout the country (even appearing on the West Coast during 1924-25) and in Harlem revues during her prime years. Clara Smith was active until shortly before her death in 1935 from heart failure at the age of 40.

Beverly "Guitar" Watkins - Back in Business

Artist Biography by Richard Skelly

Georgia-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Beverly "Guitar" Watkins is one part soul singer, one part rockin' roadhouse mama, and one part gifted songwriter. She's also been chronically under-recorded for a woman with her résumé: she spent the early '60s playing rhythm guitar with Piano Red & the Interns. She recorded with Piano Red from 1959 until the mid-'60s, and can be heard on his popular singles "Doctor Feelgood" and "Right String But the Wrong Yo Yo." Watkins learned guitar and got her earliest musical sensibilities from several of her aunts, who had a quartet named the Hayes Family. She also had a banjo playing grandfather, Luke Hayes. On holidays and at family get-togethers, these musicians would assemble and the blues and gospel were passed on in a true folk process to the young Watkins.

Her earliest influences included Rosetta Tharpe, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Memphis Minnie, and she was exposed to the music because of her grandmother, who would play their recordings on the family Gramophone. She began playing guitar as an eight-year-old, learning by listening to the records her mother would play for her. Later, she was exposed to the records of touring bands, including Louis Jordan's and Count Basie's. She began to model her playing after Charlie Byrd and Basie's rhythm guitarist, Freddie Green. Throughout high school, she participated in a variety of talent shows and played trumpet in the school band. Her high school band master helped broaden her knowledge of jazz and blues guitar, and piano. After a succession of bands in high school, she settled in with playing with Piano Red, who later changed their name and found their widest appeal, as Piano Red & the Houserockers, which led to bookings outside Atlanta and northern Florida in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.

In 1965, the band broke up, but not before going through several more name changes. Watkins then hooked up with Eddie Tigner and the Ink Spots and toured extensively with that group, playing for nearly a year with him before he was felled by a stroke. Watkins came off the road and took a break from the brutal touring she had done for much of the '60s. She worked a procession of day jobs as a domestic and in car washes before joining Leroy Redding & the Houserockers. Watkins worked on and off with Redding until the late '80s before striking out on her own and creating a residency for herself at Underground Atlanta, an Atlanta nightclub, often accompanied by a drummer and her son on bass. Here she developed her singing and harmonica-playing skills. Back in Business, her solo debut album, was released in 2001 as part of the Music Maker Series distributed by Sire Records Group/ Warner Bros. The album showcases Watkins' flexibility and prowess in a wide range of styles: roadhouse blues, jazz-inflected blues, and rockabilly-blues. Now in her sixties, Watkins continues to perform in Atlanta-area blues clubs and at major festivals around the U.S.. She put in a particularly compelling, energetic performance at the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival.