With recent bio-pics on Ray Charles and Johnny Cash covering the R&B and country fields, I predict by the end of the decade someone will make a film about a blues artist. If so, I nominate Big Bill Broonzy as the subject. Oh, I don’t know if he struggled with a drug or alcohol addiction or overcame a childhood malady—that’s the stuff for Hollywood types to exaggerate. No, what I find fascinating, and what I’d like to learn more about (and what better way than through a big-budget motion picture!) is that Broonzy is one of a select few blues artists who was instrumental in bringing the form from its rural, acoustic roots to the electric Chicago style, mainly because he was fortunate enough to have recorded in both eras.

The 20 sides that make up the 1990 compilation entitled Good Time Tonight were recorded between 1930 and 1940, which was roughly the middle of Broonzy’s career. During this time he had his greatest commercial exposure, in no small part due to his appearance at Carnegie Hall. Legendary Columbia record producer John Hammond was preparing the Spirituals to Swing concert, a show that incorporated various African-American musical genres, and originally had Robert Johnson slated to perform the blues segment. When Johnson tragically died shortly before the concert date, Hammond pegged Broonzy, then recording for Columbia’s subsidiary blues label Okeh!, to be the concert’s blues performer.

The Carnegie Hall audience was probably treated to selections similar to what is on Good Time Tonight. Throughout the album, the listener gets plenty of opportunities to hear Broonzy’s nimble finger-picking on his guitar. This compilation features good old country blues played solo, some duo work with pianist Blind John Davis, an ensemble with piano, bass, and drums, and some jump blues featuring an electric guitar as well as a brass and woodwind section.

With a moniker like “Big Bill,” one might expect a low, booming voice to emerge from the stereo. However, Broonzy’s voice is more like a model for the R&B singers of the 1950s and early 1960s—a steady, sandy tenor who can plead with his lover like the best of them, as on “Hattie Blues.”

Some of the songs are about fantastic female characters, like the imposing “Long Tall Mama” who stands 7ֽ” and “to satisfy that woman takes more than a bumblebee,” or the jazz-loving “Flat Foot Susie with Her Flat Yes Yes,” the only song on the album not written or co-written by Broonzy. However, the most domineering character might be the singer's wife on the ball-busting opener “I Can’t Be Satisfied” when he laments that he pays her for everything he gets.

Satisfaction is the name of the game on many numbers. Either the singer’s got all he needs or, more the case, he isn’t getting enough. Check out “Whiskey and Good Time Blues” and “Worrying You Off My Mind” for opposite sides of the contentment coin. It is only then that I wish his vocals were a little more on the gruff side.

Other songs are just good time fun, like the invitation to cut loose on “W.P.A. Rag” and the dance step “Woodie Woodie.” Broonzy name drops then-contemporary sports celebrities Joe Louis and Babe Ruth in “You’ve Got to Hit the Right Lick,” a feel-good number from the end of the Depression.

On the title track, Broonzy takes a date to the local moonshine hutch, then turns the tables on her at the end:

Come up to my house
You wanna have some fun
Bring your money, gal
And it’s easily done

In “Going Back to Arkansas” Broonzy sings of returning to his mother’s cooking, raising cows and chickens on a farm, and living harmoniously under one roof with his wife and mother-in-law. Left unsaid is the reason why he is returning, but it is possible that this song struck a chord with Southern men, or perhaps more directly, Southern black men, who left home during the Depression in search of better opportunities but reached the conclusion that nothing is more satisfying than being with family.

“It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame” begins with Broonzy moaning that he is in love with a married woman, a no-good tramp who can have any man she wants. But rather than judge her, he says he would do the same thing if he were in her shoes.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a blues album without a few clever double-entendres thrown in. For that, I refer you to titles such as “Too Many Drivers” and “Merry Go Round Blues” as the most obvious examples.

With a mixture of blues styles, and a remastering job that belies the age of these songs, playing this album guarantees you’ll have a Good Time Tonight.

Recommended: Yes