Brownie McGhee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Brownie McGhee | |
|---|---|
| Image:Brownie McGhee at the Nambassa 3 day Music & Alternatives festival, New Zealand 1981. Photographer Michael Bennetts..jpg Brownie McGhee performing at Nambassa in 1981.
| |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Walter McGhee |
| Born | November 30 1915 |
| Origin | Knoxville, Tennessee[1], USA |
| 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 "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.
He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee and suffered from polio as a child, which incapacitated his leg. His brother "Stick" 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.
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 II. 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. The pairing was an overnight success, recording and touring together until around 1980. They did most of their work together from 1958 until around 1980, spending eleven months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their fame as "pure" folk artists, in the 1940s, Sonny and Brownie fronted a jump blues combo with honking saxophone that was variously called Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers or Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
During the "folk 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.
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, Happy just let Brownie instruct and, in between, talk about his life and the blues. It's entitled "Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee", was edited by Happy Traum and published in New City in 1971 by Oak Publications, (a division of Embassy Music Corporation), and in the UK by Music Sales Limited, London. The autobiography section has Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward). Lots of great photos as well as chord charts and song lyrics are sprinkled throughout.
McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996, at the age of 80.[2]
[edit] See also
- American folk music
- Sonny Terry
- Woody Guthrie
- American Blues
- Stick McGheede:Brownie McGhee
fr:Brownie McGhee nl:Brownie McGhee
Categories: Folk-blues musicians | Piedmont blues musicians | Country blues musicians | East Coast blues musicians | Blues revival musicians | 1915 births | 1996 deaths | African American musicians | American blues singers | American male singers | American blues guitarists | Blues Hall of Fame inductees | American folk singers | National Heritage Fellowship winners | People from Kingsport, Tennessee | Skiffle musicians
