McGhee, Brownie, 1915-1996
URI(s)
Variants
- McGhee, Walter Brown, 1915-1996
- McGhee, Walter Brown, 1914-
- Blind Boy Fuller #2, 1915-1996
- Blind Boy Fuller Number Two, 1915-1996
- Johnson, Henry, 1915-1996
- Spider Sam, 1915-1996
- Tennessee Gabriel, 1915-1996
- Williams, Blind Boy, 1915-1996
- Blind Boy Fuller No. 2, 1915-1996
- Fuller, Blind Boy, 1915-1996
Additional Information
Birth Date
- 1915-11-30
Death Date
- 1996-02-16
Has Affiliation
- Organization: OKeh Records (Firm)
Has Affiliation
- Organization: House of Blues School (Harlem, New York, N.Y.)
Birth Place
- Knoxville (Tenn.)
Field of Activity
(naf) Blues (Music)
(naf) Folk music
Occupation
(naf) Blues musicians
(naf) Guitarists
Exact Matching Concepts from Other Schemes
Closely Matching Concepts from Other Schemes
Earlier Established Forms
- McGhee, Walter Brown, 1914-
Sources
- found: His You hear me talkin' [SR] p1978:label (Brownie McGhee)
- found: LC manual auth. cd.(hdg.: McGhee, Walter Brown, 1914- )
- found: Washington Post, 02-21-96obit. (Brownie McGhee, 80, guitarist and blues musician, d. 02-16-96 in Oakland, Calif.; b. Nashville, Tenn.)
- found: Encyclopedia of the blues, 1992(Brownie McGhee, b. 1915)
- found: All music guide WWW site, Feb. 21, 2006(Brownie McGhee; b. Walter Brown McGhee, Nov. 30, 1915, Knoxville, TN, d. Feb. 23 [sic], 1996, Oakland, CA)
- found: Classic blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, p2003:container (Brownie McGhee) insert (Walter Brown McGhee; born 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee; died 1996; after the death of his idol, Blind Boy Fuller, McGhee briefly took the name Blind Boy Fuller #2; by his own account, he used the name Blind Boy Fuller Number Two on Columbia, Henry Johnson on Decca, Spider Sam on Atlantic, and Tennessee Gabriel on Circle; when he played piano he was Blind Boy Williams; moved to New York in the early 1940s and teamed up with harmonica ace Sonny Terry, working with him into the mid-1970s)
- found: Oxford music online, August 6, 2014:Encyclopedia of popular music (McGhee, Brownie; born Walter Brown McGhee, November 30, 1915, Knoxville, Tennessee; died February 16, 1996, Oakland, California; blues singer and guitarist; in 1939 he met Sonny Terry, with whom he formed a partnership that lasted until the mid-1970s; retired to Oakland, California)
- found: Allmusic.com, August 6, 2014(Brownie McGhee; born November 30, 1915, Knoxville, TN; died February 16, 1996, Oakland, CA; folk-blues singer-guitarist; leading Piedmont-style bluesman; in the period following World War II, he also recorded electric blues and R&B on the New York scene; recorded as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2 for the Okeh label; performed for decades in a partnership with blind harmonica player Sonny Terry; also appeared in theater, film, and television productions)
- found: African American National Biography, accessed January 22, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(McGhee, Brownie; Walter Brown McGhee; blues musician, singer; born 30 November 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States; recorded first sides for Okeh records partnering harmonica player Jordan Webb on harmonica (1940); ran the House of Blues, a school in Harlem for aspiring blues singers and guitarists (1945); scored a hit with Robbie Doby Boogie (1948); one of few black artists of the pre-civil rights era with both a white and black audience; collaborated with Sonny Terry, appearing in Tennessee Williams's Broadway play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955-1958); appeared in Langston Hughes's Simply Heavenly, an off-Broadway musical revue (1957); best recordings known as Hometown Blues with Terry, Blues Is Truth with Sugar Blue on harmonica and brother Stick on guitar (1976); died 23 February 1996 in Oakland, California, United States)
Instance Of
Scheme Membership(s)
Collection Membership(s)
Change Notes
- 1983-12-16: new
- 2015-12-15: revised
Alternate Formats
