GREENE, KEVIN D., Ph.D. “Just a Dream”: Community, Identity, and the Blues of Big Bill Broonzy. (2011) Directed by Dr. Benjamin Filene. 332 pgs This dissertation investigates the development of African American identity and blues culture in the United States and Europe from the 1920s to the 1950s through an examination of the life of one of the blues’ greatest artists. Across his career, Big Bill Broonzy negotiated identities and formed communities through exchanges with and among his African American, white American, and European audiences. Each respective group held its own ideas about what the blues, its performers, and the communities they built meant to American and European culture. This study argues that Broonzy negotiated a successful and lengthy career by navigating each groups’ cultural expectations through a process that continually transformed his musical and professional identity. Chapter 1 traces Broonzy’s negotiation of black Chicago. It explores how he created his new identity and contributed to the flowering of Chicago’s blues community by navigating the emerging racial, social, and economic terrain of the city. Chapter 2 considers Broonzy’s music career from the early twentieth century to the early 1950s and argues that his evolution as a musician—his lifelong transition from country fiddler to solo male blues artist to black pop artist to American folk revivalist and European jazz hero—provides a fascinating lens through which to view how twentieth century African American artists faced opportunities—and pressures—to reshape their identities. Chapter 3 extends this examination of Broonzy’s career from 1951 until his death in 1957, a period in which he achieved newfound fame among folklorists in the United States and jazz and blues aficionados in Europe. Together, chapters 2 and 3 argue that across three decades Broonzy navigated the music industry in the United States and Europe by cannily creating identities that suited the expectations of individuals who could help sustain his career. Finally, Chapter 4 examines how Broonzy’s story has been shaped and reshaped in collective historical memory. It argues that his successful cultivation of white and European folk and jazz enthusiasts toward the end of his career contributed to a historical picture of Broonzy that masks the importance of his identity as a black artist for black audiences. Big Bill Broonzy and the African American blues musicians of his generation made their lives in a period of tremendous flux—from the Great Migrations through the emergence of the Civil Rights era. Exploring how Broonzy navigated the shifting parameters of this world illuminates the shifting contours of race, class, and politics in the twentieth century and shows how African Americans forged cultural identities and communities within and around these constraints. These identities and communities, moreover, redefined how the United States and the world would understand African American music and reshaped twentieth century cultural history. ”Just a Dream”: Community, Identity, and the Blues of Big Bill Broonzy by Kevin D. Greene A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2011 Approved by Benjamin Filene_____ Committee Chair © 2011 Kevin D. Greene To Casey, For your unending patience and continual support ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair________________________________ Benjamin Filene Committee Members_____________________________ Charles C. Bolton _____________________________ Loren Schweninger ____________________________ Donald H. Parkerson _______________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _______________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without support and encouragement from many people. First and foremost I would like to thank Benjamin Filene, whose kindness, patience, and first-rate guidance has helped transform me from a graduate student into a bourgeoning scholar. I would also like to thank Don and Jo Ann Parkerson who have equally supported and challenged me throughout this process, as well as the rest of my committee, Chuck Bolton and Loren Scwheninger. I give special thanks to Chuck Bolton who always lent an open ear and sound advice from the very beginning of this process. Beyond my committee, several people have comforted and supported me during those moments of intellectual challenge and self-doubt. These include, my wife and my family, as well as those who have shown a devoted interest in my topic as I have presented portions of my research at conferences. I would also lake to thank Michael van Isveldt and Bettina Weller for reminding me of history’s incredible and very real connection to the present and future. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 II. “BIG BILL” FROM CHICAGO: IDENTITY FORMATION IN CHICAGO’S BLACK METROPOLIS………………………25 III. EXPECTATION BLUES PART I: THE STRANGE CAREER OF BIG BILL BROONZY IN THE UNITED STATES……………………91 IV. EXPECTATION BLUES PART II: THE STRANGE CAREER OF BIG BILL IN EUROPE…………………………………………………181 V. ESCAPING THE FOLK: MUSIC, MEMORY, AND THE BLUES OF BIG BILL BROONZY……………………………………252 VI. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………………………315 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………319 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On December 23rd, 1938 Chicago bluesman Big Bill Broonzy participated in one of the most important cultural and social exchanges in American history. In front of a packed house in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Broonzy and a litany of other twentieth century African American musical legends performed in what was essentially a live review of the history of African American music in the United States. Featuring “spirituals, holy roller hymns, harmonica playing, blues, boogie-woogie piano playing, early New Orleans jazz, and soft swing,” the 1938 “From Spirituals to Swing” concert promised to educate its nearly all-white audience on “The Music that Nobody Knows.”1 Filled with recording industry giants, music promoters, university intellectuals, and government and academic folklorists, this event represented an important moment for the history of American music and racial integration. 1 John Hammond, From Spirituals to Swing: Box Set. Vanguard Records compact disc B00000JT6C. 1 The show’s rural blues component introduced Arkansas sharecropper and blues recording artist William “Big Bill” Broonzy, a last-minute replacement for a much more vaunted performer, the late Robert Johnson. In front of the packed house, Broonzy performed one of his latest and most popular blues, “Just a Dream,” to much acclaim and was expected to play another.2 Later that evening, when the time came in the playbill for his second performance, however, Broonzy had disappeared. Following the end of the concert, the show’s organizer and promoter, Columbia Records’ John Hammond, assumed that the entire cast would leave Carnegie Hall to hit the streets of New York and carry on the air of celebration throughout the night. After all, the circumstances were ripe for a magical musical moment. Christmas was two days away, and it was opening night at the very first integrated music club in the United States, Greenwich Village’s Café Society.3 As the audience filtered out of New York’s premiere music hall and the performers gathered en masse for their 2 John Hammond, From Spirituals to Swing: Box Set. Vanguard Records compact disc B00000JT6C. 3 Barney Josephson and Terry Trilling-Josephson, Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). 2 venture into the cold December night, Big Bill Broonzy could not be found. In a panic, Hammond searched the performance hall, asking anyone he could about Broonzy, only to hear that the man introduced simply as “Big Bill” had caught the earliest bus back to Arkansas in hopes of making it home for Christmas.4 At this seminal moment in American musical history, amidst dozens of music industry figures and intellectuals eager to make his acquaintance and perhaps bolster his career, why did Broonzy hit the road? Yes, Broonzy did have family back in Arkansas, where he had grown up, lending credence to his role as the replacement for the Delta blues legend Johnson. The realities of Broonzy’s story and of his identity, however, were quite different. Broonzy left New York in the early hours of Christmas Eve in 1938 not because he was so overwhelmed by the gravity of his performance’s thunderous applause and not because he wanted to go back to Arkansas. In reality, he was heading to Chicago, where he was one of the most significant members of the city’s blues community and where December 25th marked the biggest party of the year for the city’s blues 4 John Hammond, From Spirituals to Swing: Box Set, Vanguard Records compact disc B00000JT6C. 3 stalwarts. December 25th was his close friend and blues colleague Tampa Red’s birthday, and every year all of the great Chicago musicians would show up to “eat and drink, talk about different blues songs, and give [Tampa Red] a good beating.”5 So was “Big Bill” from Arkansas or Chicago? Broonzy made sure the answer to that question remained quite unclear among his audiences and fans. Chicago media personality and Broonzy’s close friend Studs Terkel once said that Broonzy “always” told the truth, but skeptically called it “his truth.”6 In actuality, Broonzy’s life was a continual work in progress, one that involved constantly defining and redefining the identities he had created throughout his long career. Born and raised in Arkansas, Broonzy had by 1939 been living in Chicago’s black metropolis for nearly twenty years, participating in important historical and cultural developments for African Americans. Broonzy helped to 5 Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Blues: William Broonzy’s Story as told to Yannick Bruynoghe (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 117.