Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly AfricanAmerican audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with workingclass AfricanAmerican audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folkblues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.

Born Lee Conley Bradley, he was one of the seventeen children of Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher. The date and place of his birth are disputed. Broonzy claimed to have been born in Scott, Mississippi, but a body of emerging research compiled by the blues historian Robert Reisman suggests that he was born in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893, and many sources report that year, but family records discovered after his death suggested that the year was 1903. Soon after his birth the family moved to an area near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where Bill spent his youth. He began playing music at an early age. At the age ofhe made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. He and a friend, Louis Carter, who played a homemade guitar, began performing at social and church functions. These early performances included playing at twostages picnics where whites and blacks danced at the same event, bu

Source: Wikipedia