More Info on Brownie McGheeSimilar Undetermined MusicSearch Artistopia
Biography
Refimprove|date=September 2011Infobox musical artist | name = Brownie McGhee| image = Brownie McGhee at the Nambassa 3 day Music & Alternatives festival, New Zealand 1981. Photographer Michael Bennetts..jpg| caption = Brownie McGhee performing at Nambassa in 1981.| image_size =| background = solo_singer| birth_name = Walter Brown McGhee| alias =| birth_date = Birth date|mf=yes|1915|11|30| birth_place = Knoxville, Tennessee , United States| death_date = death date and age|mf=yes|1996|2|16|1915|11|30| death_place = Oakland, California , United States| origin =| instrument = Guitar , piano , kazoo , singing|vocals | genre = Folk-blues , country blues , Piedmont blues , East Coast blues , Roots revival|blues revival | occupation = Musician| years_active =| label =| associated_acts = Stick McGhee , Sonny Terry | website =| current_members =| past_members =| notable_instruments =Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30, 1915 - February 16, 1996)cite web|author=Doc Rock |url= http://thedeadrockstarsclub.com/1996.html |title=The Dead Rock Stars Club 1996 - 1997 |publisher=Thedeadrockstarsclub.com |date= |accessdate=2011-11-08 was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry .cite book | first= Paul | last= Du Noyer | year= 2003 | title= The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music | edition= 1st | publisher= Flame Tree Publishing | location= Fulham, London | isbn= 1-904041-96-5 | page= 181
Life and career
Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee .Allmusic|class=artist|id=p60213|pure_url=yes Allmusic biography As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville Stick McGhee|"Sticks" or "Stick" McGhee was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board.Neely, Jack. Knoxville's Secret History. Scruffy City Publishing, 1995. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself to play guitar. A March of Dimes -funded leg operation enabled McGhee to walk.
At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller , whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry , whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis . They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of '' Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .
During the Roots revival|blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk . In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart . He appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled "The Blues Brother" in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock (TV series)|Matlock entitled "The Blues Singer."
Happy Traum , a former guitar student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward).
One of McGhee's final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival .
McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in Oakland, California|Oakland , California at age 80; he missed his planned return trip to Australia.cite web|url= http://search.atomz.com/search/? sp_a=sp1000ee84& sp_f=ISO-8859-1& sp_q=%22BROWNIE+McGhee%2 |title=Dead Rock Stars website |publisher=Search.atomz.com |date= |accessdate=2011-11-08
Discography
Traditional Blues - Vol. 1 ( Folkways Records , 1951)
Get on Board: Negro Folksongs by the Folkmasters (Folkways, 1952)
Brownie McGhee Blues (Folkways, 1955)
Washboard Band - Country Dance Music (Folkways, 1956)
Folk Songs of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Roulette, 1958)
Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Folkways, 1959)
Brownie McGhee Sings the Blues (Folkways, 1959)
Traditional Blues - Vol. 2 (Folkways, 1960)
''Preachin' the Blues (Folkways, 1968)
Sonny & Brownie ( A& M Records , 1973)
''Brownie's Blues (Prestige Records, 1984)
Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing ( Smithsonian Folkways , 1990)
The Folkways Years, 1945-1959 (Smithsonian Folkways, 1991)
http://www.sc.edu/csam/csamaudioarchive_brownie_mcghee.htm Center for Southern African American Music - Brownie McGhee & mdash; McGhee bio and audio samples
Persondata|NAME= McGhee, Brownie |ALTERNATIVE NAMES= McGhee, Walter Brown |SHORT DESCRIPTION= American folk-blues singer and guitarist |DATE OF BIRTH= November 30, 1915 |PLACE OF BIRTH= Knoxville, Tennessee |DATE OF DEATH= February 16, 1996 |PLACE OF DEATH= Oakland, California DEFAULTSORT:Macghee, Brownie Category:1915 births Category:1996 deaths Category:People from Knoxville, Tennessee Category:African American musicians Category:Piedmont blues musicians Category:Country blues musicians Category:East Coast blues musicians Category:Blues revival musicians Category:American blues singers Category:American male singers Category:American blues guitarists Category:Blues Hall of Fame inductees Category:American folk singers Category:National Heritage Fellowship winners Category:People from Kingsport, Tennessee Category:Musicians from Tennessee Category:Jubilee Records artists Category:Savoy Records artists Category:Skiffle Category:Deaths from stomach cancer Category:Cancer deaths in California
