Pye Nixa NJE 1074
Pye Jazz Today Series
7” EP
Recorded 8/5/58

Tracks

Side 1
I Love You, Baby (Terry) (recorded 8.5.58)
(Sonny Terry-vocal and harmonica; Dave Lee-piano; Brownie McGhee guitar)

Corn Bread, Peas and Black Molasses (Terry and McGhee) (recorded 8.5.58)
(Sonny Terry-vocal and harmonica; Brownie McGhee-vocal and guitar)

Side 2
That’s How I feel (McGhee) (recorded 8.5.58)
(Brownie McGhee-vocal and guitar)
You’d Better Mind (Terry and McGhee) (recorded 8.5.58)
(Sonny Terry-vocal and harmonica; Brownie McGhee-vocal and guitar)

Sleeve Notes

Jazz is full of rewarding partnerships – Bix and Trumbauer, Venuti and Lang, Higgenbotham and Allen, Brubeck and Desmond. Even within such a tradition, however, the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee partnership produces something particularly special.

Born in Greensboro’ Georgia, Sanders Terrell (Sonny Terry) was brought up on a farm in North Carolina, suffered early blindness as a result of two accidents in childhood, wandered around the States as a self taught harmonica player and entertainer with “medicine shows” and with the blues singer, Blind Boy Fuller, and was finally “discovered” and promoted with a Carnegie Hall Concert in 1938. He first met Walter Brown (Brownie) McGhee with Blind Boy Fuller in 1937.

McGhee himself, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, was crippled by an attack of poliomyelitis when he was only four – which was the indirect cause of his taking up the guitar, as some form of amusement. Before he met up with Terry and developed their act into one of the greatest blues partnerships of all times, Brownie McGhee had spent most of his professional life with minstrel and carnival shows. Together, they have brought to enthusiasts all over the world a new appreciation of the sublte complexities, inexhaustible variety and deeply moving effects of genuine folk blues.

The four songs on this record, the first of a series recorded during their visit to London in 1958, demonstrate some aspects of their astonishing natural talents. I Love You, Baby, on which Sonny is joined by pianist Dave Lee, acts as a showcase for the former’s incredible technique on the harmonica: tapping the instrument with the free left hand, revolving the palm before it, opening and shutting cupped hands, stopping out with tongue or lip pressure, all contributing to produce the variety of sounds and “squeezed” notes unobtainable by orthodox techniques. Brownie’s turn comes with That’s How I Feel, sung in Alto to give full value to his voice range, with solo guitar passages reminiscent of Blind Boy Fuller (whose heavy, steel bodied “National” instrument McGhee inherited).

Corn Bread And Black Molasses is a song Sonny learned listening in his youth to a Carolina chain gang (the words for which were collected, oddly enough, about the same time by the sociologists, Odum and Johnson). And, finally, in the jointly composed You’d Better Mind, the pair play out the disc happily improvising for innumerable swinging choruses.

Personnel

Sleeve:
Designer: Ian Bradbery
Photography: Herb Greer

Recording:
Balance: Dave Heelis
Supervision: Denis Preston