$4 Download Deal: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

Download this 1967 Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee show at the Ash Grove today for only $4.

Both Saunders Terrell AKA Sonny Terry, born in 1911 and Walter “Brownie” McGhee, born in 1915, began pursuing music from an early age for similar reasons. In Sonny Terry’s case, injuries to his eyes which resulted in blindness by age 16, and in Brownie McGhee’s case, a paralyzed leg as a result of polio, prevented them from pursuing work as farm hands or factory workers, the jobs available to most black men at the time. With such limited opportunities, each pursued music in order to earn a living. Terry and McGhee originated from North Carolina and Tennessee respectively, and they favored the Appalachian region’s Piedmont blues style, which unlike the Mississippi Delta blues, had a less raucous, gentler sound and was open to outside influences including ragtime and country music. Both musicians became protégés of the guitarist Blind Boy Fuller and favored his East Coast Piedmont style. Following Fuller’s death in 1941. McGhee, a folk-blues singer and gifted acoustic guitar player and Terry, who played harmonica and supplemented his singing with distinctive whoops and hollers, teamed up, creating a distinctive sound of their own. The combination of Terry’s raspier vocals and raw freight-train harmonica and McGhee’s softer, more melodic approach created a contrast that was also evident in their personal relationship….

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