In the Evening
LP Vogue CLVLX 272
I made my first trip to Paris in 1969 and came back with an LP featuring one of my idols. It starts with this tune by Leroy Carr. I put it on the turntable, and the outstanding vocal performance, the guitar playing, and the balance between them made everything calm and peaceful around me in the summer night when Big Bill told his and Carr’s sad tale.
As I had discovered Big Bill Broonzy, so had a new enthusiastic audience in Europe done some twenty years earlier. He was the man to both spur interest in the roots of the blues and fulfill the expectations of the public, which welcomed him with open arms. His touching song about emancipation, Black Brown and White, was written in 1945 but no American company would record it. The French Vogue did it in 1951, and when he performed it in the full Salle Pleyel the following year, there was enormous applause.
In the Evening was recorded in studio on September 20, 1951.