Piedmont guitar legend Brownie McGhee was born Walter Brown McGee on tis day in 1915 in Knoxville, TN. McGhee was an enormous influence on acoustic Blues guitarists from the beginning of his career in the early 40s untill his death in 1996, and will be for a longtime to come. McGhee was influenced by Ledbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson, as well as Rev. Gary Davis, but his most important influence was Blind Boy Fuller. Fuller`s manager, J.B. Long managed Brownie after Fuller`s death in 1941, and Brownie`s first rcordings for OKeh records were under the name Blind Boy Fuller 2. Those first sessions produced a moving tribute The Death Of Blind Boy Fuller. The second sessions for OKeh paired Brownie with harmonica player Sonny Terry. The two Bluesmen formed a duo that would go on for decades. Sonny and Brownie moved to New York in 1942 where they quickly fell in with the burgeoning NYC Folk music scene. Walter Brown (Brownie) McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996)[1] was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.[2] Life and career Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.[3] As a child he had 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. At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fullers death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentors name, branding him Blind Boy Fuller No. 2. By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbias subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after 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 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 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums. 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. During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee 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 film 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 isnt 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 fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled The Blues Singer. 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 features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward). One of McGhees final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.[3] McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in Oakland, California, at age 80; he missed his planned return trip to Australia.[6] youtu.be/nd8i4j6zQSw
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 15:01:02 +0000
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