Brownie McGhee
Encyclopedia
Walter Brown McGhee (November 30, 1915 - February 16, 1996) was a Piedmont blues
singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry
.
and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee
. As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" or "Stick" 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, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry
, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was 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 11 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 music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin
comedy The Jerk
. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart
. He also appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled "The Blues Brother" in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre.
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 York 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 Oakland
, California
at age 80; he missed his planned return trip to Australia.
Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont fingerstyle, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger,...
singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry was a blind American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.-Career:Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia...
.
Life and career
Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, TennesseeKnoxville, Tennessee
Founded in 1786, Knoxville is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, U.S.A., behind Memphis and Nashville, and is the county seat of Knox County. It is the largest city in East Tennessee, and the second-largest city in the Appalachia region...
and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee
Kingsport, Tennessee
Kingsport is a city located mainly in Sullivan County with some western portions in Hawkins County in the US state of Tennessee. The majority of the city lies in Sullivan County...
. As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" or "Stick" McGhee
Stick McGhee
Granville Henry McGhee, also known as Stick McGhee, was an African-American jump blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known for his blues song, "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee".-Early life:...
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
March of Dimes
The March of Dimes Foundation is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies.-Organization:...
-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
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long
J. B. Long
James Baxter Long, Sr. was an American store manager, owner, and record company talent scout, responsible in the 1930s for discovering Fulton Allen and Gary Davis, among other notable blues musicians.-Biography:Long was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to parents Henry Baxter Long and...
of Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
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
Okeh Records
Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry was a blind American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.-Career:Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia...
, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was 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 11 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
Jump blues
Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. It was very popular in the 1940s, and the movement was a precursor to the arrival of rhythm and blues and rock and roll...
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
Champion Jack Dupree
William Thomas Dupree, best known as Champion Jack Dupree, was an American blues pianist. His birth date is disputed, given as July 4, July 10, and July 23, in the years 1908, 1909, or 1910. He died on January 21, 1992.-Biography:...
and Big Chief Ellis
Big Chief Ellis
Wilbert Thirkield "Big Chief" Ellis was an American blues pianist and vocalist.-Biography:Ellis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, and was an autodidact at piano. He played at local parties and dances in the late 1920s before leaving Alabama, traveling the United States and working...
. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The 1947 Broadway production ran for 725 performances. Several revivals and a 1968 film version followed. A Broadway revival ran from October 8, 2009 until January 17, 2010...
and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
.
During the blues revival
Roots revival
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly-composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.After an...
of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....
comedy The Jerk
The Jerk
The Jerk is a 1979 American comedy film. Directed by Carl Reiner, the film was written by Steve Martin, Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias. This was Steve Martin's first starring role in a feature film. The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh and Jackie Mason.-Plot:The film begins...
. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart
Angel Heart
Angel Heart is a 1987 North American/British mystery-thriller film written and directed by Alan Parker, and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet...
. He also appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled "The Blues Brother" in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre.
Happy Traum
Happy Traum
Happy Traum is an American folk musician who started playing music in the Fifties. Happy is most famously known as one half of Happy and Artie Traum, a duo he began with his brother...
, 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 York 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
Chicago Blues Festival
The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in June that features three days of performances by top-tier blues musicians, both old favorites and the up-and-coming. It is hosted by the City of Chicago Mayor's Office of Special Events, and always occurs in early June...
.
McGhee died from stomach cancer
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
in February 1996 in Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
at age 80; he missed his planned return trip to Australia.
Discography
- Traditional Blues - Vol. 1 (Folkways RecordsFolkways RecordsFolkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
, 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 & BrownieSonny & BrownieSonny & Brownie is an album by blues musicians Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. It was recorded at the Paramount Recording Studios in 1973 and re-released in 1988 with digital remastering by Rudy Van Gelder at the Van Gelder Recording Studio....
(A&M Records, 1973) - Brownie's Blues (Prestige Records, 1984)
- Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing (Smithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...
, 1990) - The Folkways Years, 1945-1959 (Smithsonian Folkways, 1991)
See also
- American folk musicAmerican folk musicAmerican folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American...
- Woody GuthrieWoody GuthrieWoodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
- American BluesAmerican BluesAmerican Blues were a 1960s Texas-based garage band who played a psychedelic style of blues rock music influenced by the 13th Floor Elevators. They are most famous for including two future members of the band ZZ Top in their ranks, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard...
- List of blues musicians
- List of people from Tennessee
- List of folk musicians
External links
- Center for Southern African American Music - Brownie McGhee — McGhee bio and audio samples