I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ’em.
~Big Bill Broonzy

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don’t live it you don’t have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.
~Big Bill Broonzy

“Worried Man Blues,” “Hey, Hey” and “How You Want It Done.” From the DVD “A Musical Journey”:

Wikipedia:

Birth name	Lee Conley Bradley
Also known as	Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Broomsley
Born	June 26, 1893 Lake Dick, Arkansas, U.S.
Died	August 14, 1958 (aged 65) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Genres	Folk music, country blues, Chicago blues, spirituals, protest songs
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, sharecropper, preacher
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, fiddle
Years active	1927–1958
Labels	Paramount, A.R.C., Bluebird, Vocalion, Folkways
Associated acts	Papa Charlie Jackson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger

Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1893 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues 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.

Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences.

When Did You Leave Heaven:
(no.2 on Keith Richards “top 10 reggae and roots songs” – Rollingstone magazine)

Styles & Influences:

Broonzy’s own influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music, hokum and country blues he heard growing up, and the styles of his contemporaries, including Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these influences into his own style of the blues that foreshadowed the post-war Chicago blues sound, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

• In 1980, he was inducted into the first class of the Blues Hall of Fame along with 20 other of the world’s greatest blues legends.
• In 2007, he was inducted into the first class of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame along with 11 other musical greats including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk and others.
• Broonzy as an acoustic guitar player, inspired Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher, Ben Taylor, and Steve Howe
• In Q Magazine (September 2007) it is reported that Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones claims that Bill Broonzy’s track, “Guitar Shuffle”, is his favorite guitar music. Wood said, “It was one of the first tracks I learnt to play, but even to this day I can’t play it exactly right.”
• Eric Clapton has cited Bill Broonzy as a major inspiration: Broonzy “became like a role model for me, in terms of how to play the acoustic guitar.”
• During the benediction at the 2009 inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery paraphrased Broonzy’s song “Black, Brown and White Blues”.

 

Album of the day:

Other June 26:

• Michael Geoffrey Jones (born 26 June 1955) is a British musician, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter best known for his works with The Clash until his dismissal in 1983, then Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts before line-up changes led to the formation of Big Audio Dynamite II and finally Big Audio. Jones plays with Carbon/Silicon along with Tony James and recently toured the world as part of the Gorillaz live band (which includes former Clash member Paul Simonon).

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• Colonel Thomas Andrew “Tom” Parker (June 26, 1909 – January 21, 1997) born Andreas Cornelis (“Dries”) van Kuijk, was a Dutch-born entertainment impresario known best as the manager of Elvis Presley. Parker’s management of Presley defined the role of masterminding talent management, which involved every facet of his life and was seen as central to the astonishing success of Presley’s career. “The Colonel” displayed a ruthless devotion to his client’s interests and took more than the traditional 10 percent of his earnings (reaching up to 50 percent by the end of Presley’s life). Presley said of Parker: “I don’t think I’d have ever been very big if it wasn’t for him. He’s a very smart man.” For many years Parker falsely claimed to have been U.S.-born, but it eventually emerged that he was born in Breda in the Netherlands.

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• Christopher Joseph “Chris” Isaak (born June 26, 1956) is an American rock musician and occasional actor.

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-Egil