IN THE EVENING
BIG BILL BROONZY
SONGWRITER: LEROY CARR
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: BLACK, BROWN AND WHITE
LABEL: PARAMOUNT
GENRE: BLUES
YEAR: 1991
Big Bill
Broonzy(born Lee Conley Bradley, June 26, 1903–August 14, 1958) was an American
blues singer,
songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s 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 writing songs that reflected
his rural-to-urban experiences.[
Broonzy's
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, which foreshadowed the postwar Chicago blues, later
refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.
Although
he had been a pioneer of the Chicago blues style and had employed electric
instruments as early as 1942, white audiences in the 1950s wanted to hear him
playing his earlier songs accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar, which
they considered to be more authentic.
He
portrayed the discrimination against black Americans in his song "Black, Brown and White". The
song has been used globally in education about racism, but in the late 1990s
its inclusion in antiracism education at a school in Greater Manchester,
England, led
pupils to taunt the school's only black pupil with the song's chorus, "If
you're white, that's all right, if you're brown, stick around, but if you're
black, oh brother get back, get back, get back". The national media reported that
the problem became so bad that the nine-year-old boy was withdrawn from the
school by his mother. The song had already been adopted
by the National
Front, a far-right British political party which
peaked in popularity in the 1970s and opposed nonwhite immigration to Britain.
A considerable part of Broonzy's early ARC/CBS recordings
has been reissued in anthologies by CBS-Sony, and other earlier recordings have
been collected on blues reissue labels, as have his European and Chicago
recordings of the 1950s. The Smithsonian's Folkways Records has also released several albums featuring Broonzy.
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, and Lawrence Welk.
Broonzy
as an acoustic guitar player inspired Muddy Waters,
Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher, Ben Taylor,
and Steve Howe.
In the
September 2007 issue of Q Magazine, Ronnie Wood, of the Rolling Stones,
cited Broonzy's track "Guitar Shuffle" as his favorite guitar music. Wood remarked, "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 Broonzy as a major inspiration, commenting that Broonzy
"became like a role model for me, in terms of how to play the acoustic
guitar." Clapton featured Broonzy's song "Hey Hey" on his album Unplugged.
The Derek and the
Dominos album Layla and Other
Assorted Love Songs includes their recording of
"Key to the Highway".
Another
musician heavily influenced by Broonzy was Jerry Garcia,
who upon hearing a recording of Broonzy's blues playing decided to exchange an
accordion he received on his 15th birthday for an electric guitar. Garcia would
later co-found The Grateful Dead, who
frequently performed a number of songs which Broonzy had recorded decades
earlier, including "C.C. Rider" and "Goin' Down the Road Feelin'
Bad".
In 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".
As part
of the PopUp Archive project, in collaboration with the WFMT network, the Chicago
History Museum, and the Library of
Congress, an hour-long interview of Broonzy, recorded
on September 13, 1955, by Studs Terkel was made available on-line. The interview includes reflections on
his life and on the blues tradition, a performance of one of his most famous
songs, "Alberta," and performances of "Goin' Down the Road
Feelin' Bad" and other classics.
In the
evening
In the evening
Mama when the sun go down
In the evening darling
I declare when the sun go down
Yeah it's so lonesome it's so lonesome
I declare when the one you love is not around
When the sun go down
Last night I were layin' sleepin'
And I declare I was sleepin' all by myself
Last night I were layin' sleepin' darling
And I declare I was sleepin' all by myself
Yeah but the one, the one that I was really in love
with
I declare she was sleepin' someplace else
When the sun go down
Yeah, ooh ooh ooh wee
Yeah, ooh ooh ooh wee
Yes the one that I was in love with
I declare she was sleepin' someplace else
When the sun go down
The sun rises in the East
And I declare it sets way over in the West
Sun rises in the East darling
And I declare it sets way over in the West
Yes it's so hard, it's so hard to tell
I declare which one that'll treat you the best
When the sun go down
Now goodbye, old sweethearts and pals
Yes I declare I'm goin' away
I may be back to see you again
Little girl some old rainy day
Yes in the evening in the evening
I declare when the sun go down
When the sun go down.
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