(Brownie McGhee (r) with Sonny Terry. Picture from the Southeastern Blues Traditions pages.)

Guitarist Brownie McGhee is probably best remembered today as the longtime partner of harmonica player Sonny Terry. The duo are were major influences on the folk scene in the '50s and '60s, but McGhee was a tremendous guitarist and songwriter whose place in the American music scene is still not appreciated.

Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1915. He came from a musical family. His father, George ``Duff'' McGhee, a carpenter by trade, was a multi-instrumentalist who played in both black and interracial string bands. His mother played records by Bessie Smith, Lonnie Johnson, and country star Jimmie Rodgers. An uncle, John Evans, was a highly regarded fiddle player who gave Brownie his first instrument, a five-string banjo made from a marshmallow tin; his father bought him a toy ukelele soon after that. Brownie had contracted poliomyelitis as a child, which resulted in his right leg being considerably shorter than the left. (His brother Granville made a cart he pushed so Brownie could get around. This is how Granville got the nickname ``Stick''.) Given these two conditions, it's not surprising that Brownie turned to music, learning to play guitar and piano. While in high school he sang in a gospel quartet in Kingston and sang and played in a Baptist church in Lenoir. He also started performing at the Smoky Mountain Resort for white visitors during weekends and vacations.

By this time an operation had improved his mobility and he hit the road as a guitar player (``fella can't carry a piano around on his back''). McGhee started moving around the Tennessee-Virginia-North Carolina area. In Kingsport, he would often play white country music on the piano with Stick on guitar and Leslie Riddle on mandolin, piano, and guitar. He also ran two juke bands in Knoxville for a while. He was on the road again in 1938, travelling through West Virginia before winding up in Winston-Salem with harmonica player Jordan Webb. He soon left town with Webb, since the police did not look kindly on buskers, and wound up in Burlington. Through local players, McGhee met George Washington (aka "Oh Red" and "Bull City Red"), who introduced Brownie to J. B. Long, Blind Boy Fuller's manager.

By this time, it was apparent that Fuller was not long for this world, and Long saw in McGhee another bluesman to fill the void that was going to be created by Fuller's death. McGhee's records were initially successful, and ARC had lost interest in Buddy Moss, who looked like the coming thing before. Long's plan to have Brownie ``replace'' Fuller was pretty obvious: he had Brownie record The Death of Blind Boy Fuller using Fuller's guitar, and McGhee was called ``Blind Boy Fuller #2'' on a few releases (much to the irritation of Brownie and his father). Inadvertantly, Long also set up McGhee with his longtime partner about this time. Sonny Terry was asked to play at a concert in Washington, D.C., being given by Paul Robeson. Long asked McGhee to accompany Terry to help him get around, and maybe to play, too, if he got a chance. He did, and the two were a hit. They soon moved to New York, where they became tight with Leadbelly. McGhee opened his Brownie McGhee's School of Blues in Harlem, giving blues guitar lessons. (One of his students was Alec Seward.)

The records kept coming, of course. McGhee and Terry became in-demand recording artists (occaisionally backed by pianist Big Chief Ellis) and recorded for an array of labels. Somehow, the duo managed to maintain their popularity with African-Americans while appealing to the leftie folk audience of the time. McGhee cut a few hit R&B records in the early fifties and played on his brother Stick's only big hit, Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Drinking Wine, in 1949. Brownie also became a Broadway actor in the mid-'50s; he appeared in Langston Hughes' Simply Heaven and Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (I don't know if it's true, but the story goes that when they were offered the roles in Cat, Sonny and Brownie said ``We ain't actors.'' Then they were told how much they'd make for singing one song a night and replied ``Okay, so we're actors.'') How McGhee was able to balance the roles of folkie, Piedmont bluesman, actor, and R&B musician is beyond me.

By the early sixties, McGhee and Terry were playing before predominantly white audiences at folk festivals across America, Canada, and Europe, including taking part in the first American Folk Blues Festival. In addition, they appeared on television and in documentaries. By the mid-'70s they'd more or less split up and went their own way. Terry played until his death in '86. Brownie had all but retired by then as well, but before he passed away in 1996, he founded the Blues Is Truth Foundation to help keep the blues alive. Though there probably never has been a ``typical'' bluesman, Brownie McGhee was exceptional as a musician and a person. Rest well, Walter, and thanks for everything.

One word about Brownie and Sonny in the folk blues revival. In spite of what some people my say, they weren't wholeheartedly accepted by the folk crowd. Brownie was an intelligent and articulate man, not someone who'd put in a week's plowing before coming to the big city for the festival. As others have noted, he sounded a bit like Duke Ellington when he spoke. (Yeah, like that's really a bad thing.) Plus, they played Piedmont blues until the end, not the deep blues of Delta. Piedmont blues is often considered more ``lightweight'' (for lack of a better word), but as Archie Edwards says, ``It's deeper than you think.''

There are a lot of Brownie McGhee cds out there, and I haven't heard them all. But among those I have, my two favorites that are primarily Piedmont blues are The Complete Okeh Recordings (Sony 2CD 52933), a double cd worth the extra cash, and Brownie McGhee - Folkways Years 1945-59 (40034) on Smithsonian Folkways. As always, your mileage may vary, but these are the Piedmont style recordings that I most often listen to.