Black, Brown and White Blues

Big Bill Broonzy wrote "Black, Brown and White Blues" in the 1940s, but no American record label would touch it due to its explicit, uncompromising attack on Jim Crow segregation. It wasn't until Broonzy toured Europe in 1951 that he finally committed the song to wax in a Paris studio. Accompanying himself with crisp, swinging acoustic fingerpicking, Broonzy sang the bitter, familiar folk rhyme outlining the racial hierarchy of American employment. The track became a staple of his European concerts, highlighting the grim reality that Black artists often found the freedom to speak truth to power only after crossing the Atlantic.