People make music for all sorts of reasons. Some of the best stuff probably gets made for the heck of it and we never get to hear it. I’ve heard music in bars that I would pay any money to hear again. It’s the way of the magic. Sometimes it’s not for capturing. Sometimes it belongs to the thin air it fills so fleetingly.
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee weren’t exactly a manufactured duo or anything like it but they did come together in fairly unusual circumstances all the same. Blind Boy Fuller had been the master of the piedmont blues style that was having its heyday in the 1930s and 40s. Fuller was a star on the circuit and his expressive style and masterful picking made him a big star, selling millions of record and filling out concert halls all across the south.
In 1937, he played for the first time with Sonny Terry, an exceptionally gifted harmonica player who had being carving out a living busking on streetcorners since losing his sight aged 16.
They befriended each other on the streets of Durham, NC. It wasn’t long before they were playing together. McGhee’s unique high-pitched penetrating harmonica style called whoopin’ fitted Fuller’s frenetic style like a glove. The duo started to make waves together.
Whem Fuller died in 1941, his astute manager JB Long had already been grooming a successor in the shape of a man called Brownie McGhee from Kingsport, Tennessee. His inclination that McGhee and Terry could make sparks together was an astute one.
So McGhee stepped into Fuller’s shoes and they took to the road with gusto. Their high-energy performances were characterised by a kind of passion and energy that was perfectly in sync with one another.
The way their talents meshed is best explemplified in this 1959 recording for Roulette. Their feel for the material is so finely honed that it crackles with a vitality and exuberance that only two players perfectly in tune with each could capture. It’s explosive like fireworks. JB Long was right about the sparks.
