CLASSIC BIG BILL BROONZY BLUES 78 "KEY TO THE HIGWAY"

	£		22
	$		29

AN EXCELLENT PLAYING COPY OF THIS CLASSIC ORIGINAL BLUES 78 FROM BIG BILL BROONZY ON THE US OKEH LABEL

KEY TO THE HIGHWAY

b/w  GREEN GRASS BLUES

Big Bill Broonzy - Blues Guitarist, vocalist (1893 - 1958)

Although William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy achieved fame and success in the Chicago blues scene and the folk revival in the United States and abroad, some of his earliest encounters with the blues and his earliest experiences as a performer and song writer were in Arkansas. Born in Scott, Mississippi, on June, 26 1893, to Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher, Big Bill Broonzy was one of seventeen children. Broonzy soon moved with his family to the Pine Bluff area (Jefferson County), where he spent most of his childhood years. He began performing music at an early age, playing for social and church events on the fiddle, which he learned from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. In addition to odd jobs as a musician, Broonzy also served briefly as a pastor in the Pine Bluff area before 1918.

Between the years 1917 and 1919, Broonzy served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Europe. After his discharge in 1919, Broonzy returned to Arkansas for a brief time, playing in clubs around the Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Pine Bluff areas. In the early 1920s, Broonzy moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he switched instruments to the guitar, taught to him by Papa Charlie Jackson, and began a prolific recording career under the Paramount, Columbia, Bluebird, Okeh, and Chess record labels.

Influenced by musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Broonzy developed an amalgamated form of the blues. By combining ragtime and hokum blues with country blues, he created a style that foreshadowed the post-World War II Chicago sound, which was later defined by such artists as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

In 1938, Broonzy filled in for Robert Johnson, who had died unexpectedly, at the Spirituals to Swing Concert produced by John Hammond at Carnegie Hall. The fame achieved from this event and a follow-up concert in 1939 established Broonzy as a key figure in the Chicago blues scene. While in Chicago, Broonzy recorded more than three hundred songs and remained a popular and well-respected artist throughout the 1940s. His prolific musical output is evident from his fruitful solo career and his collaborations with other artists, such as Sonny Boy Williamson and Brownie McGhee.

With the rise of electric blues in the early 1950s, Broonzy became an active supporter of the folk blues genre. He played a Martin model 00028, a beautiful instrument. Bill played one of these from the 1950s to his death in 1958. In 1951, Broonzy took his first tour of Europe, where he was met with enthusiasm and appreciation. His appearances in Europe introduced the blues to European audiences and were especially influential in London’s emerging skiffle and rock blues scene. 

"Key to the Highway" is a blues standard first recorded by Charlie Segar in 1940. Segar, sometimes known as the "Key Board Wizard Supreme", was a blues pianist and occasional singer originally from Pensacola, Florida. He relocated to Chicago, where he made recordings with other blues artists, such as Bumble Bee Slim and Memphis Minnie, as well as being the featured artist. "Key to the Highway" is one of eight known songs Segar recorded under his own name between 1934 and 1940 for the Decca and Vocalion labels.

"Key to the Highway" is usually credited to Charles "Chas" Segar and William "Big Bill" Broonzy. As Broonzy explains: "Some of the verses he [Charlie Segar] was singing it in the South the same time as I sung it in the South. And practically all of blues is just a little change from the way that they was sung when I was a kid ... You take one song and make fifty out of it ... just change it a little bit."

Charlie Segar's original "Key to the Highway" was done in the form of a mid-tempo twelve-bar blues. When Jazz Gillum recorded it later that year (featuring Big Bill Broonzy on guitar), he changed the melody and the arrangement to an eight-bar blues, as it is now usually known (May 9, 1940 Bluebird B 8529). A year later, Broonzy recorded "Key to the Highway" utilizing Gillum's arrangement and melody, creating the best known of the early versions of the song (May 2, 1941 OKeh 6242).

In 2010, Broonzy's version of "Key to the Highway" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame "Classics of Blues Recordings" category

DISC DETAILS:

US  OKEH 06242    10" 78rpm shellac

RECORDED  2nd MAY 1941

SIDE 1 :-  KEY TO THE HIGHWAY

SIDE 2:-   GREEN GRASS BLUES

CONDITION -  EX-   some light marks and scuffs but plays GREAT

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