Birthplace: Louisiana

Big Bill Broonzy was born into a Mississippi sharecropping family. Young
Broonzy had learned the rudiments of the fiddle before his family moved to
Arkansas and by age fourteen, he was working for tips at country dances
and picnics. Bill served in the Army during World War I. After his discharge,
he returned to Arkansas and farming only to decide that he wanted to make
his living as a singer and guitar player. Sometime in the early 1920s he
moved to Chicago where, under the guidance of Papa Charlie Jackson, he
learned how to play blues guitar.

Big Bill recorded as a solo performer and played on hundreds of other
sessions during the course of his long recording career. Broonzy's brand of
blues stretched from ragtime-influenced and hokum blues to solo acoustic
country blues, from city blues backed with jazz musicians to traditional folk
blues and spirituals. Broonzy influenced many young bluesmen; often he
took artists of lesser stature under his wing and helped them secure
recording sessions and performance dates.

Although Big Bill's earliest recordings consisted of entertaining hokum and
ragtime blues, he eventually grew into a respected country blues artist, often
performing with other top blues artists in Chicago at that time, namely,
Memphis Minnie,Tampa Red, Jazz Gillum, Lonnie Johnson, Jethro T. Nuraw
and John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson.

Broonzy was a major artist on the Chicago blues scene during the 1930s.
Throughout his lifetime he held numerous menial jobs, including that of a
janitor and a maintenance man. His stature as a blues artist matured far
beyond the boundaries of the Chicago and Southern blues communities
after his performances at John Hammond's famous Spirituals and Swing
concert series in 1938 and 1939 at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This
newfound fame helped Broonzy maintain his role as a father of Chicago
blues until World War II, when the arrival of electric guitar and new artists
like Muddy Waters, pushed his brand of blues into the background. Rather
than retire, Broonzy opted for a new role-that of a folk-bluesman. In 1951 he
toured Europe, performing standard blues, traditional folk tunes, and
spirituals to appreciative audiences. He returned to Europe the following
year with pianist Blind John Davis. Not only did Broonzy help introduce
blues to Europe, especially in France and the British Isles, but he also
opened the door for other American blues artists to tour there as well.

In 1955 Broonzy, with help from writer Yannick Bruynoghe, told the story of
his life in the book Big Bill's Blues. Originally published in London, the
book was one of the earliest autobiographies by a bluesman. Two years
later, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Broonzy continued to perform,
although often with great pain, until he died of the disease in 1958. He was
inducted into Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980.