1915-1996 (born Walter Brown McGhee)
Main Guitar: Acoustic 6 String
Guitarist Brownie McGhee is probably best remembered today as the longtime partner of harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo were major influences on the folk scene in the '50s and '60s. But McGhee himself was a tremendous guitarist and songwriter in his own right. McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Nov 30th, 1915. He came from a musical family. His father, George 'Duff' McGhee, a carpenter by trade, was a multi-instrumentalist who played in both black and interracial string bands. His mother played records by Bessie Smith, Lonnie Johnson, and country star Jimmie Rodgers. And an uncle named John Evans, who was a highly regarded fiddle player, gave Brownie his first instrument, a five-string banjo made from a marshmallow tin. Soon after that, his father bought him a toy ukelele.
Brownie had contracted poliomyelitis as a child, which resulted in his right leg being considerably shorter than the left. (His brother Granville made a push cart so Brownie could get around. This is how Granville got the nickname 'Stick'.) Given these two conditions, it's not surprising that Brownie turned to music. Learning to play guitar and piano. While in high school he sang in a gospel quartet in Kingston. And he sang & played in a Baptist church in Lenoir. He also started performing at the Smoky Mountain Resort for white visitors during weekends and vacations.
By this time an operation had improved his mobility and he hit the road as a guitar player "A fella can't carry a piano around on his back." McGhee started moving around the Tennessee-Virginia-North Carolina area. In Kingsport, he would often play white country music on the piano with Stick on guitar and Leslie Riddle on mandolin, piano, and guitar. He also ran two juke bands in Knoxville for a while.
Brownie went on the road again in 1938, travelling through West Virginia before winding up in Winston-Salem with harmonica player Jordan Webb. He soon left town with Webb, since the police did not look kindly on street muscians, and wound up in Burlington. Through local players, McGhee met George Washington (aka "Oh Red" and "Bull City Red"), who introduced Brownie to J. B. Long, Blind Boy Fuller's manager.
By this time, it was apparent that Fuller was not long for this world, and Long saw in McGhee another bluesman to fill the void that was going to be created by Fuller's death. McGhee's records were initially successful, and ARC had lost interest in Buddy Moss, who looked like the coming thing before. Long's plan to have Brownie 'replace' Fuller was pretty obvious. He had Brownie record The Death of Blind Boy Fuller using Fuller's guitar, and McGhee was called 'Blind Boy Fuller #2' on a few releases (much to the irritation of Brownie and his father).
Inadvertantly, Long also set up McGhee with his long time
partner around this time. Sonny Terry was asked to play at a concert in Washington, D.C., being given by Paul Robeson. Long
asked McGhee to accompany Terry to help him get around, and maybe to play, too, if he got a chance. He did, and the two were a hit. They soon moved to New York, where they became tight with Leadbelly. McGhee opened his Brownie McGhee's School of Blues in Harlem, giving blues guitar lessons. (One of his students was Alec Seward.)
The records kept coming, of course. McGhee and Terry became in-demand recording artists (occaisionally backed by pianist Big Chief Ellis) and recorded for an array of labels. Somehow, the duo managed to maintain their popularity with African-Americans while appealing to the leftie folk audience of the time. McGhee cut a few hit R&B records in the early fifties and played on his brother Stick's only big hit, Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Drinking Wine, in 1949.
Brownie also became a Broadway actor in the mid-'50s. He appeared in Langston Hughes' Simply Heaven and Tennessee Williams' Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof. The story goes that when they were offered the roles in Cat, Sonny and Brownie said "We ain't actors." Then they were told how much they'd make for singing one song a night and replied "Okay, so we're actors." At the time, McGhee was able to balance the roles of folkie, Piedmont bluesman, actor, and R&B musician.
By the early sixties, McGhee and Terry were playing for predominantly white audiences at folk festivals across America, Canada, and Europe, including taking part in the first American Folk Blues Festival. Additionally, they appeared on television and in documentaries.
McGhee and Terry weren't whole heartedly accepted by the folk/blues revival crowd of the 60's. Brownie was an intelligent and articulate man, he even sounded a bit like Duke Ellington when he spoke. This ran contrary to the image of the downtrodden farmer by day/bluesman by night image of the 'true' bluesmen. Another strike against them at the time, was that they played Piedmont blues until the end, not the deep blues of Delta. Piedmont blues is often considered a more 'lightweight' style. But as Archie Edwards said, "It's deeper than you think."
By the mid 70's they'd more or less split up and went their own way. Terry played until his death in 1986. Brownie had all but retired by then as well, but before he left us, he founded the Blues Is Truth Foundation to help keep the blues alive. Brownie McGhee passed away in Okland California on Feb 23rd, 1996. Though there probably never has been a 'typical' bluesman, Brownie McGhee was exceptional as a musician and a person. Rest well Walter, and Walk On.
"If he[Sonny Terry] played seven bar blues, I played seven bar. Five bar, two bar, nine bar, whatever he did I followed. Two wrongs made a right. People thought it was rehearsed..."
-- Brownie Mcghee