Brownie McGhee

Biography

Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his decades-long partnership with harmonica player Sonny Terry.[5] Born in Knoxville and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee, McGhee contracted polio around age four, which left his right leg impaired and earned his brother Granville the nickname "Stick" for pushing him in a cart.[5][2] Their father, George McGhee, was a factory worker and guitarist, and Brownie first played on a homemade guitar fashioned from a tin marshmallow box before moving into local church music and gospel quartets.[5][6] As a teenager he left school to work medicine shows, carnivals, riverboats, and minstrel troupes across Tennessee and the Piedmont region, honing the syncopated, ragtime-inflected guitar style that became his hallmark.[1][3][6]

In the late 1930s McGhee was traveling the Southeast with tent shows and his father’s gospel group when washboard player George “Bull City Red” Washington introduced him to Durham talent scout J. B. Long, who also handled Blind Boy Fuller, McGhee’s guitar hero.[6][3] Long arranged McGhee’s first sessions for Okeh Records in Chicago in 1940, and after Fuller’s death he briefly promoted McGhee as “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2,” while pairing him with Fuller’s harmonica player, Saunders “Sonny” Terry.[2][3][6] Moving to New York in the early 1940s, McGhee and Terry became a formidable duo in clubs, concerts, and on wartime radio broadcasts, later expanding into jump-blues combos and cutting R&B hits such as “My Fault,” which topped the Billboard R&B charts for weeks in 1948.[2][3][6] McGhee also ran the Home of the Blues music school in Harlem from 1942 to 1950, performed in Broadway and off-Broadway productions including Tennessee Williams’s "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and appeared in European and Hollywood films.[1][2][3] During the 1960s folk revival, Terry and McGhee toured extensively in the United States and abroad, recording dozens of albums and becoming key conduits between rural Piedmont traditions and new folk and blues audiences.[3][5]

McGhee’s musical style combined the intricate, syncopated fingerpicking of the Piedmont tradition with polished singing and an easy rapport with audiences, allowing him to bridge country blues, urban R&B, and the folk-revival circuit.[2][5][6] He often framed his blues with elements of gospel call-and-response and ragtime harmony, and he was an influential teacher through both his Harlem school and informal mentoring of younger musicians.[2][6] In later years he settled in Oakland, California, continuing to tour widely, record (including the late-career album "The Facts of Life" with Robben Ford), and appear on film until poor health slowed his schedule.[3][2] For his contributions to American vernacular music he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982, one of the United States’ highest honors in the folk and traditional arts.[2][4] He died in 1996, leaving a legacy as one of the most prominent exponents of the Piedmont blues and as half of one of the most enduring duos in blues history.[2][3][5]

Fun Facts

• Because he contracted polio as a small child, his brother Granville pushed him in a cart so often that Granville became known as “Stick,” a nickname he kept when he later became the bluesman Stick McGhee.[5][2]
• Brownie’s first guitar was homemade, built from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board by his uncle, giving him an unconventional start on the instrument he would later master.[5]
• After Blind Boy Fuller’s death, promoter J. B. Long billed McGhee on records as “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2,” a common marketing trick of the time that McGhee and his family disliked.[3][6]
• In addition to his music career, McGhee appeared on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and in films such as the Western "Buck and the Preacher" and French blues documentaries, showing his range as an actor and cultural figure.[1][2][3]

Associated Acts

• Union Boys
• Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - eponymous, guitar, lead vocals, original
• Brownie McGhee & His Jook Block Busters - eponymous, original

Musical Connections

Mentors/Influences

• Blind Boy Fuller - Major stylistic model in Piedmont fingerpicking; McGhee admired him and was briefly marketed as “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2” after Fuller’s death. (McGhee’s early Okeh recordings (e.g., “Me and My Dog,” “Picking My Tomatoes”) were cut under the guidance of Fuller’s manager J. B. Long and echo Fuller’s style.) [Late 1930s–early 1940s[3][6]]
• George McGhee - Brownie’s father, a local guitarist and singer whose playing and repertoire shaped Brownie’s earliest exposure to the blues. (Informal performances around Knoxville and Kingsport; family gospel group with which Brownie later traveled.) [1910s–1930s[1][5][6]]
• Buddy Moss - Fellow Piedmont blues guitarist who instructed McGhee in the business side of music, especially publishing and royalties. (Advice during a Chicago “swap session” that helped McGhee navigate contracts and copyright.) [Early 1940s[3]]

Key Collaborators

• Sonny Terry - Primary musical partner; together they became one of the most famous blues duos, touring, recording, and performing on stage and film for four decades. (Numerous duo albums from the 1940s–1970s; jump-blues combos under names such as Sonny Terry and His Buckshot Five and Brownie McGhee and His Jail House Rockers; extensive 1960s folk-revival tours.) [1939–around 1980 (with peak duo activity 1958–1980)[2][3][5][6]]
• Woody Guthrie - Collaborated on wartime radio programs and performances blending folk and blues for domestic and overseas audiences. (Office of War Information (OWI) radio shows broadcast by the BBC during World War II; appearances as part of ensembles such as the Headline Singers.) [Early–mid 1940s[1][2]]
• Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) - Shared New York folk scene; McGhee roomed with Sonny Terry and Lead Belly and performed in mixed folk–blues groups. (Performances with Woody Guthrie and others as the Headline Singers in New York.) [Early 1940s[1]]
• Paul Robeson - Joint performances that linked blues with politically engaged folk and concert music. (Concerts in Washington, D.C., where McGhee and Sonny Terry appeared with Robeson.) [Around 1940[1]]
• George “Bull City Red” Washington - Early collaborator who helped connect McGhee to industry talent scout J. B. Long, kick-starting his recording career. (Street and tent-show performances in North Carolina; recordings arranged through Long for Okeh Records.) [Late 1930s–1940[2][6]]
• Robben Ford - Collaborated with McGhee on his final studio album, blending traditional blues with contemporary guitar work. (Album "The Facts of Life.") [Early 1980s[3]]

Artists Influenced

• 1960s folk-revival blues guitarists (e.g., many unnamed students at his Harlem school) - Through his Home of the Blues Music School and constant touring, McGhee taught fingerpicked Piedmont blues guitar to a generation of young, largely white folk and blues players. (Private instruction and workshops at the Home of the Blues Music School; festival and college performances that shaped the folk-blues repertoire.) [1942–1950 (school), continuing influence through the 1950s–1970s folk revival[2][3]]
• Subsequent Piedmont and acoustic blues performers - Recognized by institutions such as the NEA and the Blues Foundation as a key bearer of Piedmont style whose recordings and performances serve as reference points for later artists. (Classic duo recordings with Sonny Terry; R&B singles such as “My Fault”; numerous festival appearances documented in audio and film.) [1950s onward, especially post-1960s folk revival[2][3][4][5]]

Discography

Albums

Top Tracks

1. Bring It On Home To Me (Sonny & Brownie)
2. Diggin' My Potatoes (Wizard Of The Harmonica)
3. The Battle Is Over (But The War Goes On) (Sonny & Brownie)
4. Walkin My Blues Away (Sonny & Brownie)
5. People Get Ready (Sonny & Brownie)
6. Better Day (Guitar Highway)
7. You Bring Out The Boogie In Me (Sonny & Brownie)
8. White Boy Lost In The Blues (Sonny & Brownie)
9. Sail Away (Sonny & Brownie)
10. I'm Crazy 'Bout Your Pie (Wizard Of The Harmonica)

External Links

• Spotify
• Wikipedia
• MusicBrainz

Tags: #blues, #piedmont-blues