“When I first heard Big Bill Broonzy. I saw a clip of him on TV playing in a nightclub lot by the light of a single bulb. The tune he was playing was a song called “Hey Hey” and it knocked me out. When I first heard Big Bill and later Robert Johnson, I became convinced that all rock n roll…had sprung from this root.” – Eric Clapton “I saw Big Bill Broonzy when I was about eight and he encapsulated everything I wanted to be: to sing, to play the guitar and to be black.”– Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones Big Bill Broonzy was among the finest and most influential of the early blues singers. In November 1927 Big Bill’s first record, House Rent Stomp, was released. Over the next 30 years Big Bill recorded over 260 blues songs. In his postwar career as a folk-blues singer, he introduced the music to white audiences. His impact as a guitarist was profound. Eric Clapton, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Davey Graham, Martin Carthy, Keith Richards, Ray Davies, Jeff Beck, and many others, all professed to their sense of wonder on seeing or hearing Big Bill play. Bert Jansch bought a Big Bill EP and, “spent a year trying to play that stuff.” This collection presents 22 of Big Bill’s guitar arrangements. Titles include: Key of C Big Bill Blues, Too Too Train Blues, Long Tall Mama, Shuffle Rag, Guitar Shuffle, Slow Blues, Skoodle Do Do, At the Break of Day, Friendless Blues, St. Louis Blues, Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home Key of A Big Bill’s Guitar Blues, Starvation Blues, Five Feet Seven Key of G Bull Cow Blues, Shelby County Blues, Louise Louise Key of E Hey Hey, I’ll Be Back Home Again, The Banker’s Blues, Mississippi River Blues, Worry You Off My Mind/Part One One simply cannot talk about people of importance to this genre without tipping the hat to the most masterful musician, teacher, musicologist, producer, folklorist and preservationist of the traditional blues. By now, Stefan Grossman is a venerated, iconoclastic and respected acoustic blues figure of mega-proportions. He came out of the vibrant Greenwich Village, New York, 1960s scene around Washington Square, where so many American folk and blues musicians launched their careers. His friend and occasional collaborator, Steve Katz, formerly of the Even Dozen Jug Band, the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears, once half-jokingly told this writer: "There we were, all these New York Jews playing the black blues." Indeed, the blues had a strong influence on young New Yorkers during the folk revival. These musicians, Stefan Grossman, Happy & Artie Traum, Danny Kalb, and many others, in turn had a powerful influence on the acceptance of the blues by the American baby boomer generation at large; and, they significantly helped to launch the folk, roots & blues revival, thereby reinvigorating the careers of many original blues musicians whose careers had waned. Many people know Stefan Grossman as the paramount teacher and entrepreneur in what has become the world's largest "blues school", Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop. He is one of the most skilled guitarists in the genre, having been a student of Rev. Gary Davis in New York City. He also picked up lessons directly from Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and others.