Brownie McGhee was an influential Piedmont blues singer and guitarist best known for his collaborations with harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo were very popular on the concert and festival circuit from the 1940s until 1980, recording numerous albums together. McGhee also had a small acting career late in life before passing away from stomach cancer in 1996 at age 80.
Brownie McGhee was an influential Piedmont blues singer and guitarist best known for his collaborations with harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo were very popular on the concert and festival circuit from the 1940s until 1980, recording numerous albums together. McGhee also had a small acting career late in life before passing away from stomach cancer in 1996 at age 80.
Brownie McGhee was an influential Piedmont blues singer and guitarist best known for his collaborations with harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo were very popular on the concert and festival circuit from the 1940s until 1980, recording numerous albums together. McGhee also had a small acting career late in life before passing away from stomach cancer in 1996 at age 80.
Brownie McGhee was an influential Piedmont blues singer and guitarist best known for his collaborations with harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo were very popular on the concert and festival circuit from the 1940s until 1980, recording numerous albums together. McGhee also had a small acting career late in life before passing away from stomach cancer in 1996 at age 80.
1915 February 16, 1996)[1] was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.[2]
were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. Late in his life, McGhee began appearing in small lm or TV roles. 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. In his review of Angel Heart, critic Roger Ebert singled out McGhee for praise, declaring that he delivered a performance that proves [saxophonist] Dexter Gordon isn't the only old musician who can act.[5] McGhee appeared in a 1988 episode of Family Ties titled The Blues, Brother in which he played ctional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled The Blues Singer.
Life and career
Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and
grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.[3] As a child of about four he contracted 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. Brownies uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board.[4] 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.
Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownies,
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 feaAt age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musi- tures Brownie talking about growing up, his musical becian, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriend- ginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s ing Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing inuenced onward). him greatly. After Fullers death in 1941, J. B. Long One of McGhees nal concert appearances was at the of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentors 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.[3] name, branding him Blind Boy Fuller No. 2. By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbias subsidiary McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came af- Oakland, California, at age 80. ter 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 Fullers harmonica player. The 2 Discography 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 2.1 Solo albums 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums. Traditional Blues - Vol. 1 (Folkways Records, 1951) 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 Finians Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Brownie McGhee Blues (Folkways, 1955)
Brownie McGhee Sings the Blues (Folkways, 1959) Traditional Blues - Vol. 2 (Folkways, 1960) Brownies Blues (Original Blues Classics, 1962) Blues Is Truth (Blues Alliance, 1976) Facts Of Life (Blues Rock'It, 1985)
During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee
1
2.2
Compilation
The Folkways Years, 1945-1959 (Smithsonian Folkways, 1991)
2.3
With Sonny Terry
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) Sonny & Brownie (A&M Records, 1973) Brownie McGhee and Sonny (Smithsonian Folkways, 1990)
Terry
Sing
See also American folk music Woody Guthrie American Blues List of blues musicians List of people from Tennessee List of folk musicians
References
[1] Doc Rock. The Dead Rock Stars Club 1996 - 1997. Thedeadrockstarsclub.com. Retrieved 2011-11-08. [2] Du Noyer, Paul (2003). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (1st ed.). Fulham, London: Flame Tree Publishing. p. 181. ISBN 1-904041-96-5. [3] AllMusic biography [4] Neely, Jack. Knoxvilles Secret History. Scruy City Publishing, 1995. [5] Roger Ebert (March 6, 1987). Angel Heart. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
External links Center for Southern African American Music Brownie McGhee McGhee bio and audio samples Brownie McGhee at the Internet Movie Database
EXTERNAL LINKS
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