Brownie Mcghee - 1982 NEA National Hertiage Fellowship

After staying in Knoxville a few years, he started travelling again. He made his way through North Carolina as a street performer, and in Winston-Salem he teamed up with harmonica player Jordan Webb. Then he moved on to Burlington, where he met George "Oh Red" Washington, a friend of Webb's. Washington suggested that the musicians go on to Durham to play for Okeh Records talent scout J. B. Long.

Long was impressed with McGhee and set up his first recording date in Chicago in 1940. McGhee recorded first with Webb, and later with harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry, after Terry's previous music partner, Blind Boy Fuller, died. Long sought to capitalize on the popular "Fuller-Terry" sound by placing McGhee and Terry together. This partnership proved very successful, and in the early 1940s McGhee moved to New York, where Terry lived, and the pair quickly became popular in local nightclubs, coffeehouses, and folk concerts.

In 1942, McGhee opened the Home of the Blues Music School in New York, where he taught young musicians the intricacies of fingerpicked blues guitar. He operated the school until 1950, but also continued his recording career. In 1944, McGhee had signed with Savoy Records, and the following year with Alert. During World War II, he performed with Woody Guthrie and Terry on the Office of War Information (OWI) radio shows broadcast by the BBC in London, and he also appeared in short wartime films produced by OWI.

In 1947, McGhee performed on the soundtrack for the motion picture The Roosevelt Story. Around this time he also began writing his own compositions. Among his better-known songs are his recordings of "Sportin' Life" (Alert) and "My Fault" (Savoy). He said, "'Sportin' Life' was based on the last letter I got from my mother. My sister went and told her what kind of life I was living, and she sent me a message that said, 'I want you to change your ways.'"

Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, McGhee and Terry recorded for several other labels. McGhee sometimes performed under one of several pseudonyms, including Spider Sam, Big Tom Collins, Henry Johnson, and Blind Boy Williams. In addition to touring with Terry and recording, McGhee appeared in Broadway shows, such as Finian's Rainbow, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Langston Hughes's Simply Heaven. Also during this period, he fronted a band called the Mighty Rockers that played in clubs and at house parties in New York and New Jersey. In the 1960s McGhee and Terry were featured on many major network television shows and several folk music special programs. They also toured with Harry Belafonte.

McGhee's busy and diverse performing schedule continued into the 1970s. He recorded the soundtrack for the film Buck and the Preacher and appeared in two French films, Blues Under the Skin and Out of the Blacks and Into the Blues. In the early 1970s, McGhee moved to California, where he built his own home in 1974 in Oakland. He continued to perform across the United States and abroad until his