Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee | Artist
Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee were an American blues duo formed 1941 in New York. Saunders Terrell aka Sonny Terry was born 1911 in Greenville Georgia, and Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee was born 1915 in Knoxville Tennessee. The pair met when they both played with "Blind Boy" Fuller, both having been playing blues and work songs since they were children, on farms and as travelling minstrels. Sonny Terry, who became blind at the age of 16 played harmonica and sang, while McGhee played acoustic guitar and also sang. The duo became well known among white audiences during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. This included collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing classic recordings for Folkway Records. The duo's first commercial album release was Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing, released 1958 on Folkways. They would go on to release a total of 33 studio albums plus numerous live albums, singles and compilations. Standout albums include Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing, Blues & Folk (1960), Down Home Blues (1960), Home Town Blues (1965), A Long Way From Home (1969) and Sonny & Brownie (1973). The pair also released many excellent solo and collaborative albums, notably Sonny Terry & Lightnin' Hopkins' Last Night Blues (1961), Lightnin' Sonny & Brownie (1965), and Sonny Terry, Johnny Winter & Willie Dixon's Whoopin' (1984). In their later years, Terry & McGhee appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk, and collaborated with Ry Cooder on "Walkin' Away Blues". Sonny Terry also performed a cover of Robert Johnson's "Crossroad Blues" for the 1986 film Crossroads. Terry & McGhee were both recipients of a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honour in the folk and traditional arts.
Artist Website: allaboutbluesmusic/sonny-terry-brownie-mcghee
Featured Albums: Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee
Related Artists: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lightnin' Hopkins
Video Clips: Two More Songs, Walk On, Key to the Highway
