Brownie McGhee

Birth Name:

Walter Brown McGhee

Birth Place:

Knoxville, Tennessee, United States

Profession

Soundtrack, Actor, Music department

An advocate for civil rights, he refused to play for segregated audiences
Started out playing blues in traveling tent shows in the southern United States
Appeared with Blind Sonny Terry on Broadway in Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Langston Hughes's "Simply Heaven․"
Met his long time musical partner Blind Sonny Terry in 1939 and formed a popular blues duo in which he sang and played guitar and Terry played harmonica
His first guitar was made by his uncle out of a piece of board and a tin marshmallow box
Offered guitar lessons at Brownie McGhee's School of Blues, which he opened in Harlem
As he was lame and his partner Blind Sonny Terry was blind, the two would compensate for each other's weaknesses on and off the stage

Fast Facts