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I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
Bob Riesman
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Description for I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
Paperback. A major figure in American blues and folk music, Big Bill Broonzy (1903-58) left his Arkansas Delta home after World War I, headed north, and became the leading Chicago bluesman of the 1930s. This book traces Big Bill's career from his rise as a nationally prominent blues star to his influential role in the post-World War II folk revival. Num Pages: 366 pages, 31 halftones. BIC Classification: AVGK; AVH; BGFA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 232 x 168 x 20. Weight in Grams: 512.
A major figure in American blues and folk music, Big Bill Broonzy (1903-58) left his Arkansas Delta home after World War I, headed north, and became the leading Chicago bluesman of the 1930s. His success came as he fused traditional rural blues with the electrified sound that was beginning to emerge in Chicago. This, however, was just one step in his remarkable journey: Big Bill was constantly reinventing himself, both in reality and in his retellings of it. Bob Riesman's groundbreaking biography tells the compelling life story of a lost figure from the annals of music history. "I Feel So Good" traces Big Bill's career from his rise as a nationally prominent blues star, including his historic 1938 appearance at Carnegie Hall, to his influential role in the post-World War II folk revival, when he sang about racial injustice alongside Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel. Riesman's account brings the reader into the jazz clubs and concert halls of Europe, as Big Bill's overseas tours in the 1950s ignited the British blues-rock explosion of the 1960s. Interviews with Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Ray Davies reveal Broonzy's profound impact on the British rockers who would follow him and change the course of popular music. Along the way, Riesman details Big Bill's complicated and poignant personal saga: he was married three times and became a father at the very end of his life to a child half a world away. He also brings to light Big Bill's final years, when he lost first his voice, then his life, to cancer, just as his international reputation was reaching its peak. Featuring many rarely seen photos, as well as a foreword by the celebrated music writer and historian Peter Guralnick, "I Feel So Good" will be the definitive account of Big Bill Broonzy's life and music.
Product Details
Publisher
University Of Chicago Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2012
Condition
New
Number of Pages
368
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226007090
SKU
V9780226007090
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-2
About Bob Riesman
Bob Riesman is coeditor of Chicago Folk: Images of the Sixties Music Scene: The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage. He produced and cowrote the television documentary American Roots Music: Chicago, and was a contributor to Routledge's Encyclopedia of the Blues.
Reviews for I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
"Bob Riesman's account of Broonzy's career in Chicago, Paris, London, and later on the US folk circuit with Peter Seeger and others, is as dense and detailed as it is clear and straightforward.... I Feel So Good is a well-written, beautifully produced account of a life lived in performance." (Times Literary Supplement)"