Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. At about the age of four he contracted polio, which incapacitated his right leg. His brother Granville "Stick" McGhee, who also later became a musician and composed the famous song "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee," was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. Their father, George McGhee, was a factory worker, known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board.
McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with a local harmony group, the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet, and teaching himself to play guitar. He also played the five-string banjo and ukulele and studied piano. Surgery funded by the March of Dimes enabled McGhee to walk....Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee had attempted to be successful recording artists, 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 Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and playing to the tastes of their audiences.
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Links to Peel[]
Peel mentioned in Margrave of the Marshes and elsewhere that Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee weren't among his favourite blues artists, despite their popularity with audiences during the folk revival of the 1950s and '60s:
By this time, and inspired, as always, by Lonnie Donegan, I was beginning to take an interest in the blues. I started, as so many had before me, with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Sonny and Brownie toured Europe frequently, allegedly loathed each other, and their music, except when Sonny takes off on one of his deeply rural harmonica solos, now sounds rather anodyne (Margrave Of The Marshes, p132)
This explains why no tracks by the duo appear in his playlists of the 1960s. Nevertheless they were booked for a Peel session when they visited Britain in 1973, possibly as part of an early 1970s retrospective trend which saw various "roots" artists (Son House, the Chieftains, Merseybeat groups) doing sessions for Top Gear.
However, Peel's attitude may have changed by the time he played a few songs by the duo on his shows during the 90's and early 00's. He also paid tribute to Brownie McGhee by playing a track by him and Sonny Terry in 1996 after he heard that the singer had died during the week.
Sessions[]
1. Recorded with Sonny Terry: 1973-06-05. First Broadcast: 19 June 1973
- Walkin' My Blues Away / Rock Island Line / Walk On / Life Is A Gamble
Other Shows Played[]
- 01 September 1995 (& Sonny Terry): 'Riffin' Harmonica Jump'
- 1996
- 23 February 1996 (& Sonny Terry): 'If You Lose Your Money (LP-Brownie McGhee And Sonny Terry Sing)' (Folkways)
- 02 March 1996 (BFBS) (& Sonny Terry): 'If You Lose Your Money (LP-Brownie McGhee And Sonny Terry Sing)' (Folkways)
- 1999
- 20 April 1999 (& Sonny Terry): No Need Of Running (LP: Sonny Terry And Brownie McGhee) Fantasy
- 2002
- 10 December 2002 (& Sonny Terry): 'Cornbread, Beans And Black Molasses (LP - In London)' (Nixa)
- 2004
- 03 March 2004 (& Sonny Terry): Fox Hunt (Album: Down Home Blues) Prestige Bluesville