Big Bill Broonzy
c. 1893–1958
Prolific Chicago bluesman who reinvented himself as a solo “folk blues” singer for European audiences — the first of the great bluesmen many Britons ever heard live.
Born Lee Conley Bradley in the Mississippi Delta — the year is disputed, either 1893 or 1903, and he encouraged the confusion — Broonzy moved north in the 1920s and became one of the most recorded bluesmen of the pre-war Chicago era, first with a country style and later fronting small bands. After the war, as electric bands took over, he recast himself as a lone acoustic songster for the folk audience, and from 1951 toured Europe repeatedly. In 1957 he crossed Britain on a concert tour with 's band, one of the first sustained encounters between British audiences and a working American blues singer. He died of cancer in Chicago in 1958.