Reverend Pearly Brown

Born August 18, 1915, in Abbeville, Georgia, Rev. Pearly Brown may well have been the final major exponent of the classic blues street-singer tradition. Blind since birth, he spent his childhood in Americus, Georgia, where he is said to have taken up the guitar at the age of seven. In his youth he began performing for passersby on the streets of Americus before relocating to Macon, where he remained a familiar presence on the sidewalks for many years. His material leaned heavily on the example of Blind Willie Johnson, whose bottleneck technique Brown absorbed and made personal; in the same manner as Johnson, he specialized in blues-inflected gospel, delivering spirituals and what he termed “slave songs” alongside spiritually charged country numbers such as “Great Speckled Bird.” The 1960s brought him wider recognition through appearances at major jazz and blues festivals, including opening slots for touring rock acts, and he became the first Black artist to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Accounts suggest that both Duane Allman and Dickey Betts received slide-guitar guidance from him. Although Brown possessed a strong voice and frequently incisive guitar work, his recorded output remained modest in quantity yet consistently distinguished. Henry Oster captured his performances in Macon in 1961, resulting in the Folk-Lyric album Georgia Street Singer. Bill Nowlin produced the 1973 Rounder release It’s a Mean Old World to Try to Live In. In 1975 John English filmed the documentary Mean Old World; this footage was later paired with a profile of bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup titled Born in the Blues and issued on video in 1997. Brown kept performing on the streets of Macon until declining health prompted his retirement in 1979, and he passed away in 1986.