KEY TO THE HIGHWAY
Created on 07/08/2001Latest update on 15/03/2024
Artist: Charlie Segar
Author: Charlie Segar
Label: Vocalion
Year: 1940
Piano player from Pensacola, Florida who lived in Chicago since the twenties. Two months before Jazz Gillum and a full year before coauthor Big Bill Broonzy and differently arranged (12 bar blues). Segar plays piano, Gillum harmonica, Broonzy guitar. Reissued on the Frémeaux collection Chicago Blues 1940-1947.
Covers:
- 1940:
Jazz Gillum [the familiar version (8 bar blues) with Big Bill Broonzy on guitar]
- 1941:
Big Bill Broonzy [with Jazz Gillum on harmonica]
- 1952:
John Lee Hooker [with Eddie Kirkland]
- 1952:
- 1958:
- 1961:
- 1964:
- 1967:
- 1968:
- 1968:
Band [bonus track on cd version Music From Big Pink]
- 1970:
- 1970:
Led Zeppelin [outtake Led Zeppelin III]
- 1971:
- 1975:
Rod Piazza [with Hollywood Fats]
- 1981:
- 1989:
- 1992:
- 1992:
- 1993:
- 1995:
- 1996:
- 2000:
- 2001:
- 2009:
- 2010:
- 2014:
- 2015:
- 2021:
- 2024:
Big Bill Broonzy knew this tune from his uncle, banjo player Jerry Belcher, Stonewall Jackson's partner. Uncle Jerry was from the same Belcher family which was brutally murdered in the Arkansas woods in 1913 (story told by Big Bill on Alan Lomax document Blues In The Mississippi Night - Ryko).
