Big Bill Broonzy - The Anthology (2011)

Big Bill Broonzy was born William Lee Conley Broonzy in the tiny town of
Scott, Mississippi, just across the river from Arkansas. During his
childhood, Broonzy's family - itinerant sharecroppers and the descendants
of ex-slaves - moved to Pine Bluff to work the fields there. Broonzy
learned to play a cigar box fiddle from his uncle, and as a teenager, he
played violin in local churches, at community dances, and in a country
string band. During World War I, Broonzy enlisted in the US Army, and in
1920 he moved to Chicago and worked in the factories for several years.

Broonzy built a blues recording career that lasted from 1927, when he
tracked his first side with Paramount Records, through his last UK tour in
1957, and he did it by subtly adapting his intelligent blues style to the
times, starting out with some vital and rough sides of country-blues, then
moving into an urban groove that helped build the classic electric Chicago
blues sound, before gracefully embracing the acoustic folk-blues just as
the folk revival was building in the US in the late '50s, and he did all
this without changing all that much, really, and it makes his recorded
legacy a remarkably consistent one across the various blues styles: they
all sound like Big Bill.

This remastered two-disc, 50-track set collects the essential tracks from
all of Broonzy's different eras (including, of course, his signature “Key
to the Highway,” originally released in 1941 by OKeh Records), and it makes
for a fine, in-depth survey and portrait of this influential blues player
and composer.