Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee Back Home Bluesrogercch33t

SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE BACK HOME BLUES
CD Released: June 2005 Label: Prism Platinuim

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Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. As a child he suffered from polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" 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. 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 travelling 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, Illinois, but his real success came after he moved to New York City in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 as 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 eleven 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 blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots music and their white customers.
In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart.
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 City 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 California at age 80: he missed his planned return trip to Australia.

Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry (24 October 1911, Greensboro, North Carolina - 11 March 1986, Mineola, New York) was a blind blues musician. He was most widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.
His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and lost his sight by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work himself In order to earn a living Terry was forced to play music. He began playing in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died he began playing in the trio of Piedmont-style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, he established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and the pair recorded numerous tracks together. The duo became well-known, even among white audiences, as they joined the growing folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This included collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways) classic recordings.
In 1938 Terry was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the first From Spirituals to Swing concert, and later that year he recorded for the Library of Congress. In 1940 Terry recorded his first commercial sides. Some of his most famous works include "Old Jabo" a song about a man bitten by a snake and "Lost John" in this he demonstrates his amazing breath control combined with overblows and bends.
Despite their fame as "pure" folk artists, in the 1940s, Terry and McGhee fronted a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano that was variously called Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers or Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five.
Terry was also in the 1947 original cast of the Broadway musical comedy, Finian's Rainbow
Terry's song "Fox Chase" was used by the experimental filmmaker Len Lye as the soundtrack for his short film, Color Cry (1952). "Old Lost John" was used by Werner Herzog at the conclusion of his 1977 feature film, Stroszek, and he also appeared in The Color Purple. More recently Terry's track "Whoopin' The Blues" was used for a EON Wind Farm brand commercial.
Terry died in 1986, the year he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Track Listings
1. Custard Pie Blues
2. Whoopin' The Blues
3. My Fault
4. Working Man's Blues
5. Shakedown Blues
6. Poor Boy Blues
7. Harmonica Blues
8. Big- Legged Woman
9. Bad Blood
10. Sweet Woman
11. Back Home Blues
12. Harmonica And Washboard Breakdown
13. Dealing With The Devil
14. Worried Life Blues
15. Mean Ole Frisco
16. Go On Blues
17. Lonesome Train
18. Not Guilty Blues
19. Lovin' With A Feeling
20. Way I Feel
21. No Love Blues
22. Fox Chase
23. Sportin' Life Blues
24. Diggin' My Tomatoes
25. Blowin' The Blues