Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

Sonny Terry's exuberant cry punctuating his vigorous harmonica phrases stood out as an utterly singular trademark in blues. Few harmonica specialists exerted comparable long-term sway over the idiom, and the blind performer—whose whoop the likes of Buster Brown directly emulated—also issued strong urban blues sessions under his own name while maintaining a decades-long partnership with guitarist Brownie McGhee.

Saunders Terrell learned harmonica from his father, a local dance performer whose repertoire favored folk reels and jigs rather than blues material. Although not born without sight, Terry lost vision in one eye at age five and in the remaining eye at eighteen, sharply restricting his employment prospects and prompting him to perform on city streets with his harmonicas. He soon teamed with Piedmont pioneer Blind Boy Fuller, making his initial recordings alongside the guitarist for Vocalion in 1937.

In 1938 Terry received an invitation to appear at New York’s Carnegie Hall during the landmark From Spirituals to Swing concert, showcasing his distinctive abilities in an elevated setting. That same year he documented material for the Library of Congress, and he waxed his earliest commercial recordings in 1940. Having crossed paths with Brownie McGhee in 1939, the pair united after Fuller’s death; they appeared together on a 1941 McGhee session for OKeh and relocated to New York as a duo in 1942, where they entered the folk circuit alongside Leadbelly, Josh White, and Woody Guthrie.

Although Brownie McGhee maintained an exceptionally busy studio schedule through the mid-1940s, Terry recorded less frequently under his own leadership, in part because of an extended engagement in the Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow that lasted roughly two years beginning in 1946. He cut sides for Asch and Savoy in 1944, followed by three strong Capitol sessions in 1947—the initial pair featuring Stick McGhee on guitar rather than Brownie—and one further date in 1950.

Throughout the 1950s Terry produced additional tracks in an R&B vein for Jax, Jackson, Red Robin, RCA Victor, Groove, Harlem, Old Town, and Ember, most often with Brownie providing guitar. The folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, elevated the duo to widespread recognition within folk circles. They traveled extensively together, releasing numerous acoustic duet albums, until their long-standing collaboration dissolved amid considerable reported friction during the mid-1970s.