Think of Big Bill Broonzy as Leadbelly with sharper teeth. Like the seminal Texas strummer, Broonzy worked in the songster tradition, using guitar purely as accompaniment to his storytelling rather than a means of virtuosic expression. But Broonzy's political lyrics--especially the famed color-line critique "Black, Brown, and White," with its warning "if you're black, get back"--are more direct. So are his onstage observations about racism and poverty in America in the two just-unveiled concerts on this two-disc set. As the liner notes explain, gin and the warmth of Broonzy's audience loosened the native Mississippian's lips on these nights. Nonetheless, his openhearted delivery of originals like "Just a Dream," later covered by his disciple Muddy Waters, and the standard repertoire of the early folk-blues era ("Midnight Special," Leroy Carr's "When the Sun Goes Down") is on the mark. An improvised stab at "Guitar Rag" and a "Happy Birthday" to a new acquaintance testify to the informality of these sets. They also lend breadth to a rare self-portrait of this highly influential bluesman as an inspired entertainer. --Ted Drozdowski

More Big Bill Broonzy

The Young Big Bill Broonzy (1928-1935)	Good Time Tonight	Trouble in Mind

You wouldn't expect music that has been languishing unheard in the vaults for more than a half century to sound this clear and vital, as if it were recorded yesterday. Though Big Bill Broonzy was a seminal figure in the progression of the blues from the Mississippi delta to the south side of Chicago, his repertoire encompassed everything from folk songs to spirituals to (at one of these concerts at least) "Happy Birthday." During a period when the blues was mainly marketed as "race records" back home, Broonzy served as an international ambassador for the music, as shown by the enthusiastic responses to the ebullient performer at these Amsterdam concerts. Cancer would claim him just five years after this European tour, but this two-disc live set finds him in fine voice and engaging manner (some of the between-song patter lasts longer than the songs themselves). He makes "John Henry" and "Down by the Riverside" seem more like living history than museum pieces, with his version of (and introduction to) Bessie Smith's "Back-Water Blues" sounding all the more timely in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. --Don McLeese