Walter "Brownie" McGhee

Walter "Brownie" McGhee was born November 30, 1915, in Knoxville, Tennessee. When McGhee was five years of age, he was stricken by poliomyelitis. Although he walked with crutches and a cane for some time, his recovery was nearly a complete success; the only lingering visible effect of the illness was that he walked with a limp throughout his life.

His father, George Duffield McGhee, was a skilled guitarist and singer. The senior McGhee often teamed up with his brother-in-law, John Evans, a fiddler, to play for local dances and parties. When Brownie was seven years of age, Evans built him a five-string banjo as his first instrument. Within a year, McGhee also began learning to play the piano and the guitar. He recalled his father’s telling him never to strum the guitar, but to pick it as he did, using his bare fingers: "My daddy forbade me to play with a straight pick, and he was absolutely against me playing with a slide."

Following his father's directive, McGhee developed his own style, characterized by picking patterns and syncopated melodies played over a thumb-picked bass. "My thumb is another hand," he explained. "My father always told me something should be happening on the guitar all the time.... I was 14 or 15 before anybody knew I could play the guitar. But my daddy knew I was foolin' with his guitar, because I'd get it out of tune."

McGhee's family moved several times while he was growing up. He attended elementary school in Lenoir City, and while there he sometimes played the organ at the Solomon Temple Baptist Church. Later, he sang in the choir at the Sanctified Baptist Church. A few years later, the family relocated to Marysville, Tennessee, where McGhee started high school, but during the summer after his freshman year he quit to become an itinerant musician. He entertained at resorts in the Smoky Mountains, and then earned a living traveling throughout Tennessee playing and singing, working with the Hagg Carnival and in medicine and minstrel shows.

In the early 1930s, McGhee rejoined his family on their farm in Kingsport. He stayed there for a few years helping with farmwork and singing in his spare time with The Golden Voices, a gospel quartet. As pressures of the Depression began to ease, he moved to Knoxville, and over the next few years he formed a series of small bands to play at local affairs in and around the city.

In 1937, McGhee took advantage of a March of Dimes program to have an operation on his foot to reduce or eliminate his dependency on crutches and the cane. He was in the hospital for nine months. While there, he made up his mind to walk without a crutch. "I just wanted to pick up my guitar and start walking. And that's just what I did."