Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Brownie McGhee - Quote

brownie_mcghee

Anywhere I'm wanted, I'll go. I've got to be wanted, though.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Friday, August 20, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Brownie McGhee - Good Morning Blues

A performance on Australian daytime TV sometime late 1980s or more likely early 1990s? Although getting near the end of his performing career Brownie still had a wonderful voice and was a real entertainer.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Brownie McGhee Biography

Brownie McGhee's death in 1996 represents an enormous and irreplaceable loss to the blues field. Although he had been semi-retired and suffering from stomach cancer, the guitarist was still the leading Piedmont-style bluesman on the planet, venerated worldwide for his prolific activities both on his own and with his longtime partner, the blind harpist Sonny Terry.

Together, McGhee and Terry worked for decades in an acoustic folk-blues bag, singing ancient ditties like "John Henry" and "Pick a Bale of Cotton" for appreciative audiences worldwide. But McGhee was capable of a great deal more. Throughout the immediate postwar era, he cut electric blues and R&B on the New York scene, even enjoying a huge R&B hit in 1948 with "My Fault" for Savoy (Hal "Cornbread" Singer handled tenor sax duties on the 78).

Walter Brown McGhee grew up in Kingsport, TN. He contracted polio at the age of four, which left him with a serious limp and plenty of time away from school to practice the guitar chords that he'd learned from his father, Duff McGhee. Brownie's younger brother, Granville McGhee, was also a talented guitarist who later hit big with the romping "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee"; he earned his nickname, "Stick," by pushing his crippled sibling around in a small cart propelled by a stick.

A 1937 operation sponsored by the March of Dimes restored most of McGhee's mobility. Off he went as soon as he recovered, traveling and playing throughout the Southeast. His jaunts brought him into contact with washboard player George "Oh Red" (or "Bull City Red") Washington in 1940, who in turn introduced McGhee to talent scout J.B. Long. Long got him a recording contract with OKeh/Columbia in 1940; his debut session in Chicago produced a dozen tracks over two days.

Long's principal blues artist, Blind Boy Fuller, died in 1941, precipitating Okeh to issue some of McGhee's early efforts under the sobriquet of Blind Boy Fuller No. 2. McGhee cut a moving tribute song, "Death of Blind Boy Fuller," shortly after the passing. McGhee's third marathon session for OKeh in 1941 paired him for the first time on shellac with whooping harpist Terry for "Workingman's Blues."

The pair resettled in New York in 1942. They quickly got connected with the city's burgeoning folk music circuit, working with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. After the end of World War II, McGhee began to record most prolifically, both with and without Terry, for a myriad of R&B labels: Savoy (where he cut "Robbie Doby Boogie" in 1948 and "New Baseball Boogie" the next year), Alert, London, Derby, Sittin' in With and its Jax subsidiary in 1952, Jackson, Bobby Robinson's Red Robin logo (1953), Dot, and Harlem, before crossing over to the folk audience during the late '50s with Terry at his side. One of McGhee's last dates for Savoy in 1958 produced the remarkably contemporary "Living with the Blues," with Roy Gaines and Carl Lynch blasting away on lead guitars and a sound light years removed from the staid folk world.

McGhee and Terry were among the first blues artists to tour Europe during the 1950s, and they ventured overseas often after that. Their plethora of late-'50s/early-'60s albums for Folkways, Choice, World Pacific, Bluesville, and Fantasy presented the duo in acoustic folk trappings only, their Piedmont-style musical interplay a constant (if gradually more predictable) delight.

McGhee didn't limit his talents to concert settings. He appeared on Broadway for three years in a production of playwright Tennessee Williams's +Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955 and later put in a stint in the Langston Hughes play +Simply Heaven. Films (Angel Heart, Buck and the Preacher) and an episode of the TV sitcom Family Ties also benefited from his dignified presence.

The wheels finally came off the partnership of McGhee and Terry during the mid-'70s. Toward the end, they preferred not to share a stage with one another (Terry would play with another guitarist, then McGhee would do a solo), let alone communicate. One of McGhee's final concert appearances came at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival; his voice was a tad less robust than usual, but no less moving, and his rich, full-bodied acoustic guitar work cut through the cool evening air with alacrity. His like won't pass this way again.

~ Bill Dahl, All Music Guide

Monday, August 16, 2010

Walter "Brownie" McGhee

brownie_mcghee (1) 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."

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Brownie Mcghee - 1982 NEA National Hertiage Fellowship

brownie_mcghee 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

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