Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee helped introduce the Piedmont blues style to the white New York City folk-crowd in the 1940s, then to the rest of the United States during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and after that, to the world. They formed one of the most enduring partnerships in blues, playing together for more than 30 years.
Terry was born Saunders Terrell in October 1911, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He lost the sight of both his eyes in separate childhood accidents. Devoting himself to music, he became a blues harmonica player, and performed on street corners. Around 1934, he met Blind Boy Fuller, a popular and influential blues guitarist. He played with Fuller often in the next few years and accompanied him to New York City in 1937 for a recording session. In 1938, Terry played in John Hammond’s legendary From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, creating a sensation with his interwoven harmonica playing and singing (characterised by a distinctive falsetto whoop). He met Brownie McGhee shortly after, although they did not become permanent partners until McGhee moved to New York in 1942.
Brownie McGhee was born Walter Brown McGhee in November 1915, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Childhood polio left him crippled and frequently housebound, and he continued to walk with a limp after an operation. He learned guitar from his father, and was playing in church before the age of ten. By his early teens, he was performing in medicine shows, minstrel troupes, and carnivals. Influenced by Lonnie JOHNSON and Blind Boy Fuller, he soon made his mark playing blues. He even recorded under the name Blind Boy Fuller No. 2, after Fuller died of blood poisoning in 1941.
It was talent scout J. B. Long, also Fuller’s mentor, who first put Terry and McGhee together. Terry and McGhee both lived with LEADBELLY during their early years in New York, and soon began performing before the same liberal audiences as Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Woody GUTHRIE and others, playing acoustic blues in the old style. They also recorded for the Library of Congress, and closely associated themselves with the folk-blues movement. For many years they toured extensively, playing clubs, festivals, and concerts, becoming perhaps the best-known blues artists of the era.
They recorded mostly rhythm and blues on black labels until the late 1950s, performing sometimes as a duo, sometimes as sidemen for other performers, and sometimes with sidemen of their own. McGhee had two big hits, “Baseball Boogie” in 1946 and “My Fault” in 1948. They also began careers in theatre, landing parts on Broadway in Finian’s Rainbow in the 1940s, and in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the 1950s. McGhee later appeared in movies and on television shows.
McGhee’s fingerpicked guitar-playing in a rocking, rhythmic-melodic style, and Terry’s “whooping” harmonica defined the blues of the Piedmont area of the Southeast U.S. They recorded often for a half dozen labels, then became fixtures at folk and blues festivals around the world.
Despite their long association, they were not the closest of friends. Their often stormy relationship—occasionally involving on-stage bickering—ended in the 1970s. They continued to perform individually into the 1980s, with Terry recording the album Whoopin’ with Johnny Winter and Willie DIXON on the Alligator label. Terry died on March 12, 1986, the same year he was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame. McGhee died, on the brink of making a comeback, on February 16, 1996.
Stan Hieronymus
SEE ALSO:
BLUES; FOLK MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing; TheFolkway Years, 1944–1963; Toughest Terry and Baddest Brownie.