100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own by Edward Komara & Greg Johnson

Author:Edward Komara & Greg Johnson [Komara, Edward & Johnson, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
Published: 2013-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Why did Broonzy make these claims, despite the facts that Riesman uncovered? I think Broonzy wanted to place himself not as man but as bluesman in the center of African American culture and post–Civil War history. To claim a familial memory of slavery still vivid, it was better to claim parents as slave-born rather than grandparents. By saying he was born in 1893 in Mississippi, he could claim that he was born in the same land at the same time as the blues. By claiming a birth year of 1893, he would need to claim also to have served in the world war and hence have some experience of life outside the United States. Why he adopted the name of Broonzy is unclear, but no matter; it is a rarely used name that is still most associated with him.

In his published “story,” Broonzy told of his life through 1928 through chronologically arranged tales and from then through the early 1950s through descriptions of his songs and musician friends. For this biography, Riesman had to proceed systematically through the whole factual life, from the years as a leading figure in Chicago blues to the performances as folk figure across the northern United States and Europe. As it turned out, even the best-documented periods have some mystery. For example, Broonzy took many opportunities to participate in commercial recording sessions in Chicago as featured singer and as sideman guitarist during the 1930s. Yet he claimed to have been working day jobs during the same period. But the sheer number of the sessions documented with his presence suggests to me that either he was earning enough from music alone not to have a day job or he had a sympathetic and flexible boss at the day job. Another mystery is why he chose to be a mentor to young bluesmen on their arrivals in Chicago, for he seemed not to have had a mentor when he arrived there in the early 1920s. There are just some things that remained private with the person and that will never be known.

In his songs and writings, Broonzy presented himself as rooted in African American cultures in the South and Chicago yet taking the opportunity after World War II to bring those cultures in a first-person blues way to white Americans and Europeans. However, Riesman brings forth a racial cross-current in Broonzy’s later life. The postwar Chicago blues scene with the new formulations of electrically amplified bands rendered obsolete the prewar bluesmen for younger African Americans in that city, however much that Broonzy recognized and encouraged the leaders of those bands, like Muddy Waters and Elmore James. At the same time, the blooming folk music efforts being nurtured by William Stracke and Studs Terkel in Chicago and the affirmation of blues as a jazz antecedent by Hughes Panassie and Yannick Bruynoghe in Europe needed for credibility Broonzy and his central blues persona. It takes a tall man to put and keep one foot in each racial culture, but Broonzy did that without selling out commercially.

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