Key to the Highway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Key to the Highway
Charlie Segar
publication 1940
length 2:45
Genre (s) blues
Award (s) Blues Hall of Fame
Cover versions
1941 Big Bill Broonzy
1958 Little Walter
1970 Eric Clapton
1978 Stefan Diestelmann
2000 BB King & Eric Clapton

Key to the Highway is a blues standard first recorded for Vocalion (Vocalion 5441) by Charlie Segar in 1940 . It is one of eight songs that Segar recorded for Vocalion and Decca between 1934 and 1940. After moving to Chicago, he continued to record under his own name, but also worked for Memphis Minnie and Bumble Bee Slim .

Charles "Chas" Segar and William "Big Bill" Broonzy are usually given as authors. Broonzy explains:

“Some of the verses he [Charlie Segar] was singing it in the South the same time as I sung it in the South. And practically all of blues is just a little change from the way that they was sung when I was a kid ... You take one song and make fifty out of it ... just change it a little bit. "

“He sang some of the verses in the south when I sang there too. And all of the blues is just a little interchange of the way I sang songs when I was a kid ... you take a song and turn it into fifty ... you just change a little bit. "

- William "Big Bill" Broonzy

The original was a 12 bar medium tempo blues . Later in 1940 Jazz Gillum (with Big Bill Broonzy on guitar) recorded the song (Bluebird B 8529) and changed it to an 8 bar blues. In this version it is still played today. In 1941 Big Bill Broonzy recorded the song (OKeh 6242) and created the most famous of all early versions of the song. This version was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010 .

Little Walter apparently recorded his version of the song (Checker 904) as a tribute to the artist shortly after Big Bill Broonzy's death in 1958. The single was the last in a series of great hits by the harmonica player. Another significant version is by Eric Clapton on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, a nine-minute random jam session with Duane Allman . Clapton also recorded the song with Johnnie Johnson (1991) and BB King (Riding with the King, 2000). At two concerts by the Allman Brothers at the Beacon Theater in New York City (March 19 and 20, 2009) he appeared with them and played the song. The Rolling Stones recorded the track in 1964 at Chess Studio in Chicago, and it wasn't released until over 20 years later at the end of the album Dirty Work , in memory of Ian Stewart , the Stones pianist, who passed away after the album was completed.

Cover versions

Jazz Gillum's arrangement has been covered by many blues musicians, including:

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ David Evans: Ramblin 'On My Mind . New Perspectives on the Blues. University of Illinois Press, Champaign 2008, ISBN 978-0-252-07448-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 9, 2016]).
  2. ↑ Key to the Highway at Allmusic (English)
  3. ↑ Cathy Lynn Preston (Ed.): Folk, Literature, and Cultural Theory . Collected essays. Taylor & Francis, 1995, ISBN 978-0-8240-7271-1 .
  4. ^ Blues Hall of Fame
  5. ↑ The Layla Sessions liner notes, page 6
  6. ↑ Searched on Cd Universe, Amazon and Discogs