Brownie McGhee
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| Brownie McGhee | |
|---|---|
 Brownie McGhee performing at Nambassa in 1981.
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Walter Brown McGhee |
| Born | November 30, 1915 |
| Origin | Knoxville, Tennessee[1], United States |
| Died | February 16, 1996 (aged 80) |
| Genre(s) | Folk-blues Country blues Piedmont blues East Coast blues Blues revival |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar, Piano, Kazoo, Vocals |
| Associated acts | Stick McGhee Sonny Terry |
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.
[edit] Life and career
He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee and suffered from polio as a child, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" McGhee got his nickname from pushing young Brownie around in a cart. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself the guitar. A March of Dimes funded operation on his leg enabled McGhee to walk, enhancing his mobility.
At the age of 22 he became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and meeting and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had him 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 did not come until his 1942 relocation to New York City, when he officially teamed up with Sonny Terry, who he had known since 1939 as Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success, recording and touring together until around 1980. They did most of their work together from 1958 until 1980, spending eleven months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their fame as "pure" folk artists plying 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/or rolling piano that was variously called 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 highly popular on the concert and festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and 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 lesson student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum let McGhee instruct and, in between, talk about his life and the blues. Entitled "Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee", it was published in New City in 1971. The autobiography section has 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 came at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.[1]
McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in California, at the age of 80: He missed his planned return trip to Australia.[2]
[edit] See also
- American folk music
- Woody Guthrie
- American Blues
- List of blues musicians
- List of people from Tennessee
- List of folk musicians
