|
|
|
|
Brownie McGhee
|
| |
|
| |
Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30 1915 - February 16 1996) was a folk-blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
nie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. As a child he suffered from polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" McGhee was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Brownie McGhee' Start a new discussion about 'Brownie McGhee' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30 1915 - February 16 1996) was a folk-blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
Life and career
Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. As a child he suffered from polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" McGhee was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself to play guitar. A March of Dimes-funded leg operation enabled McGhee to walk.
At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois, but his real success came after he moved to New York City in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 as Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending eleven months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots music and their white customers.
In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart.
Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New City in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward).
One of McGhee's final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.
McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in California at age 80: he missed his planned return trip to Australia.
Discography
- Traditional Blues - Vol. 1 (Folkways Records, 1951)
- Get on Board: Negro Folksongs by the Folkmasters (Folkways, 1952)
- Brownie McGhee Blues (Folkways, 1955)
- Washboard Band - Country Dance Music (Folkways, 1956)
- Folk Songs of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Roulette, 1958)
- Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Folkways, 1959)
- Brownie McGhee Sings the Blues (Folkways, 1959)
- Traditional Blues - Vol. 2 (Folkways, 1960)
- Preachin' the Blues (Folkways, 1968)
- Sonny & Brownie (A&M Records, 1973)
- Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing (Smithsonian Folkways, 1990)
- The Folkways Years, 1945-1959 (Smithsonian Folkways, 1991)
See also
External links
- — McGhee bio and audio samples
|
| |
|
|
