Re: Big Bill Broonzy and Jazz Gillum

["Chris Hammond" <dawgawntired@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have an interesting story related to this exact topic.  I went to a Robert 
Lockwood Jr concert in Cincinnati about 10 years ago.  I got to talk to 
Robert afterwards, as he had played the aforementioned song.  He got totally 
pissed off when we started talking about who wrote it.  He said that Jazz 
Gillum wrote it and enayone who disagreed was full of %^*!@(!@

And that's the truth!!






>From: tom ball <havaball@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: tom ball <havaball@xxxxxxx>
>To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Big Bill Broonzy and Jazz Gillum
>Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:58:52 -0700
>
>
>Larry Boy wrote:
>___________________________
>Lotsa chatter about Big Bill lately.  He's bonafied.  He's credited with
>having penned Key to the Highway, an all time classic.  I thought I 
>remember
>some dispute between him and Jazz Gillum as to who actually wrote the tune.
>Is there any evidence that Jazz may have actually written Key to the
>Highway?
>___________
>Depends on which sources one cares to believe. <g>  The dispute no doubt 
>stems from the fact that the song was originally recorded by Gillum on May 
>9, 1940 (with Broonzy accompanying him on guitar,) then recorded again by 
>Broonzy on May 2, 1941 (with Gillum accompanying on harp.)
>
>On the Broonzy recording it lists W. Broonzy & C. Segar as writers. On the 
>Gillum version is says "J. Gilham (sic) Duchess Music Corp." But then I've 
>also seen recordings of it credited to Little Walter, Brownie McGhee and 
>Lightnin' Hopkins.
>
>Gillum always claimed to have written the piece, and contended that he was 
>ripped off, but who knows?
>
>Incidentally in the book "Me And Big Joe," Mike Bloomfield wrote about 
>visiting Gillum in Chicago in the early '60s:
>
>"And there was Jazz Gillum, who was just about the craziest man I'd ever 
>met.  Joe <i.e. Big Joe Williams> took me to see him on a very 
>uncomfortable summer day, with both the temperature and the humidity up in 
>the nineties -- the kind of day when doing nothing makes you sweat; when 
>dirt forms up under your fingernails for no reason at all.  We drove out to 
>the West Side and stopped in front of a tiny frame house, just a shanty, 
>really.  When we walked into the place I thought I'd hit Hell City -- as 
>hot as it was outside, it was insufferably worse within.  All the windows 
>were shut down tight. Clad in a huge brown overcoat and sweating profusely, 
>Gillum stood beside a woodstove, stoking a raging fire.  He was extremely 
>paranoid.  He'd written the very successful Key To The Highway and had 
>never gotten the publishing money for it, and was afraid I'd come to steal 
>his other tunes.  We didn't stay long enough to change his mind."
>
>Tom Ball
>Santa Barbarian
>
>
>
>--
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