Acoustic Guitar Lessons - The Life Of Brownie McGhee
Brownie McGhee was born in Tennessee (Knoxville) and was brought up in Kingsport, also in that State. As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" or "Stick" McGhee was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a wooden cart. His Dad, George McGhee, worked in a factory and was known in the region around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Obviously McGhee got his first acoustic guitar lessons from his father. Brownie's uncle made him his first guitar from an old tin box and a piece of old wood. McGhee spent a lot of of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group called the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and he taught himself to pick guitar.
When he was 22, McGhee became a traveling performer, as a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and becoming friendly with Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. It appears that Fuller also gave Brownie guitar lessons during their relationship. When Fuller died in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By this time, McGhee was making records for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but the mostl success came after he relocated to NY City in 1942, when he joined Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Terry was played harmonica for BB Fuller. The relationship was an overnight winner. In addition to recording, they toured together up until about 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 to 1980, dedicating 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their more recent fame as popular folk performers playing for largely white audiences, during the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to become successful black artists, creating a jump blues group with honking saxophone and rolling piano, sometimes calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," frequently with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis.
During the blues revival in the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were extremely well known on the music and concert fair circuits, now and again adding new songs but usually staying faithful to their roots and their admirers.
Happy Traum, a celebrated pupil of McGhee's, created a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook applying his techniques. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, discuss his life and blues music. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in the early 70s. The autobio section includes a transcript of McGhee chatting about his childhood, his musical beginnings, and a short history of the early blues period.
McGhee's last public appearance was at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1995. McGhee passed away from cancer of the stomach in February 1996 in Oakland, California at the age of 80.
When he was 22, McGhee became a traveling performer, as a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and becoming friendly with Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. It appears that Fuller also gave Brownie guitar lessons during their relationship. When Fuller died in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By this time, McGhee was making records for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but the mostl success came after he relocated to NY City in 1942, when he joined Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Terry was played harmonica for BB Fuller. The relationship was an overnight winner. In addition to recording, they toured together up until about 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 to 1980, dedicating 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their more recent fame as popular folk performers playing for largely white audiences, during the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to become successful black artists, creating a jump blues group with honking saxophone and rolling piano, sometimes calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," frequently with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis.
During the blues revival in the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were extremely well known on the music and concert fair circuits, now and again adding new songs but usually staying faithful to their roots and their admirers.
Happy Traum, a celebrated pupil of McGhee's, created a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook applying his techniques. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, discuss his life and blues music. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in the early 70s. The autobio section includes a transcript of McGhee chatting about his childhood, his musical beginnings, and a short history of the early blues period.
McGhee's last public appearance was at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1995. McGhee passed away from cancer of the stomach in February 1996 in Oakland, California at the age of 80.
