Acoustic Guitar Lessons And The Music 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 cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known in the region around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. No doubt McGhee got his first acoustic guitar lessons this way. An uncle of Brownie's made him his first guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of old wood. McGhee spent much of his younger years immersed in music, performing with a local harmony group named the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and he taught himself to pick guitar.

When he was 22, Brownie McGhee decided to become a traveling musician, working with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and becoming friendly with Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced the younger man. It appears that Fuller additionally gave Brownie acoustic guitar lessons at about that time. After Fuller's death around 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee borrow his old teacher's name, calling him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was making records for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Illinois, but the most success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with the legendary Sonny Terry, who was known to him since 1939 as Sonny was playing harmonica for BB Fuller. The pairing was an immediate success. As well as making records, they traveled around together until about 1980. As a couple, they did most of their work from 1958 to 1980, dedicating 11 months of each year on tour, and recording dozens of albums.

Despite their more recent fame as popular folk performers playing for largely white audiences, in the 1940s they also tried to become successful black artists, creating a jump blues group with blaring saxophone and boogie piano, sometimes naming themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," frequently with Big Chief Ellis and Champion Jack Dupree.

In the midst of the blues-folk revival of the 1960s, Brownie and Sonny were very popular on the music and concert festival circuits, now and again adding new songs but usually remaining faithful to the blues roots and their audience. Brownie's final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival. He passed away from stomach cancer in 1996 in Oakland, CA at the age of 80.

Happy Traum, who took acoustic guitar lessons with Brownie, created a blues guitar tuition guide and songbook using his style. Making use of a tape recorder, Happy had McGhee give instruction and, between the lessons, discuss his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section includes a transcript of McGhee talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a short history of early blues guitar.

Graham P Bailey

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