Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee “Folk Alive” May 1, 1974

Host: Good evening. This is “Folk Alive”. Several weeks ago I went to see Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at theBrooklyn Academy of Music. After the show I got a chance to speak with them for a little while and tonight’s program is the first half of that interview interspersed with some of their songs. Sonny and Brownie have been playing the blues together for 36 years and are perhaps the lone survivors of that blues era. I asked them if their music has changed much in that time. First we’ll hear Sonny, harmonica player and vocalist, and then Brownie, guitarist and vocalist.

Sonny: …my music changed. The only change it was I got better. I know I can play better than I was ten, eleven, twelve years ago. I ain’t call that change. I ain’t never change my music.

Brownie: You know, I couldn’t change. I’ll tell you why, I don’t see any reason to change now. I’ve got so many records out, and I identify with my records. So now if I wanted to get into another bag it would be, I think it would be very strange for me to change after forty years. What you gonna change for? I’m on a solid rock. But I don’t think what I’m doing is…

Host: I think what you’re doing is a lot more honest.

Brownie: And it’s much better for me because I can identify with it. It’s my life that I’m talking about, my experience that I’m talking about, my environment that I’ve lived in . It’s no imagination I dream up. And I don’t tell jokes, and I don’t go out and tell fairy tales, and I don’t make up stories to tell people. It’s no laughing matter, nothing to shout about. You want the truth spoken I’ll tell it, because I’m not ashamed of it. And that’s all blues is, truth. You know, if you’re not singing the truth, you understand, you can forget it.

[song]

Host: This might be a horrible question but, how long have you been playing?

Brownie: Ever since I been playing now 58 years old. And I’ve been playing since I was eight. I started on piano first.

Host: How come you don’t play piano?

Brownie: I don’t really feel piano but if it’s some extra time if I’m near a piano and I feel up to it I’ll just lay the guitar down and go up to it. The truth about it, I was a victim of polio when I was five, and I walked with a crutch and a cane until I was 19. So I felt very much out of place with a guitar and a crutch and a cane, carrying it around. I never took the guitar out. But I was playing guitar all the

time but I didn’t play out in public. But I would always go and play parties where the piano was.

Host: Who taught you…

My father was my influence. My father was a good guitarist, but he wasn’t a professional guitarist. He was good enough to be but he was a hard working man, he raised a family without a wife. I liked what he was doing and it rubbed off on me.

Host: Did he buy you your first guitar?

Brownie: No. I played his, but I was out of class when I did and he didn’t want me to touch it because he figured I didn’t know…

Host: Because you were a little kid?

Brownie: I didn’t know the value of it and he thought a lot of it. But he knew when I’d had it and I got scolded about it lots of times. But I bought my first guitar when I was…it cost me 3 dollars and I likely never paid for it. I was still going to school. That was back in the ‘30’s.

Host: When did you first start playing the harp?

Sonny: Around about eight or nine years old. I started professionally when I was about eighteen.

Host: How did you get your first harmonica?

Sonny: My father bought it. My father learned me my first song, the “Fox Chase”. How to imitate a dog. A dog running in a fox chase, you know that’s what they did down South there. All of them would get together, you know like you’d get together, and kin get together. You’d have five or six dogs and I’d have five or six and we all would bet who would catch the fox, you know. And they had the fox there and the fox was down in a pen and they’d just turn em out, you know. And what dog catch the fox first they’re the one that win. They’d bet a dollar or two dollars on em. The caller would say, “I’ll bet you two dollars my dog’ll get em”. He said, “I bet you three mine’ll get em”. So, hearing about him and them that’s where my father learned about the fox chase and then he learned me.

Host: Then you just went from there?

Sonny: And then I got to listening at the dog and I learned my little boy how to do it. That’s where I got that whoop from you hear me do. (Whoops). I got all that from that. So now that I’m trying it out you know and with my harmonica to

see how it fit, so I see it’s fitting alright with my harp. So I juts kept it up and I been doing it now for…

Host: Have you ever had somebody come up to you and say, “well that’s not how you play the harmonica, this is how you play the harmonica”?

Sonny: No. If he do I’ll tell him he ain’t there. I’ll tell him he wants a tapping on the side of his head.

[song]

Host: This new album you play with a whole lot of white people: John Mayal a whole lot of white English blues men.

Brownie: Y’all get that thing wrong. He played with us. We didn’t play with them, they played with us. Get that right (laughing)?

Host: That’s what I mean Why did you decide to do that?

Brownie: We did this, wanted this. They just want an album who thought that we could be laughing up a little bit… so now some of the good artists wanted to…we asked for that ourselves.

Sonny: Well it was just the audience that we were looking for, people that didn’t know us. There’s a young audience out here that’s never seen us, don’t know anything about us. Because what they were seeking to find was, where did the urban white blues come from? They wanted to know. And I wanted to let them know that these people were younger than us. I had little John Mayal come to the United States and Arlo Guthrie’s father. So, you know, we must have been unborn for all our time-- and he knew that we knew him and so we got familiar and he likes what we were doing. He said if he had time he would get permission. Come in like today, he would love to do it.

[song]

Sonny: There ain't many people know what me and Brownie doing. I like to play with the man. Love to play. Oh he can play every song I play and I can play what he play. I don't care if he know a new one during the day. If he come in and play I can play it with him cause I know its that good and I'm going to sing it with him. Any clear song I play it. So that's what I like about that you know what I'm saying. Can't everybody do that you see. They take a lesson for two weeks or two months so they can get to what we're doing you know. It's always about here you know. It no read no music.

Brownie: See I've lived through three changes of blues. What they call Rock City Blues, Country Blues, Folk Blues, and Jazz Jive, whatever you want to call it--Urban

Blues, now or less. And I found once I was on a solid rock and I wasn't going to let anybody change me from that. Because you see, the thing that comes up new is that you don't jump out first, you have to wait to see what its going to do. And I found out that they imitating me, with a different--something going on. And I says it, "I'm the foundation so why should I move."

[song]

Brownie: You know actually how long me and you been together?

Sonny: Yeah, put a (?) about 33 years.

Brownie: That's a long time to be with a man, ain't it? (chuckles)

Sonny: We don't want nothing. (chuckles)

[song with spoken word pieces]

Brownie: Did I ever tell you about the first guitar I bought? A friend Leo across the street infront of me had a guitar. He says, "I'll sell it to you for a dollar and quarter McGhee." I didn't have a dollar and quarter so I gave him fifty cents. And he left me have the guitar. Do you know I was three years paying him for that guitar? He threatened to take it back so many times

Sonny: I know the first time I was out playing and it was 25 cents for that harmonica. I had wait the whole week for that quarter.

Brownie: Lot of things has happened through the years.

Sonny: Your right.

Brownie: You don’t tell people about that really know about it.

Sonny: I never get it. I think about those things a whole lotta times. So we decided we’d go in this supermarket and get us some cold cuts. Folks around think we take something out and don’t pay for it.

Brownie: Well you couldn’t see and I couldn’t run so what we gonna take?

Sonny: So we run. We drove up to this gas station. Brownie tuked his horn. Man come out. Brownie said, “Fill em up.” He looked, “I don’t sell no black gas man” And I said, “Good God almighty.”

Brownie: He didn’t even have no black water. Only thing dark he had was Cokes and didn’t even sell them to us.

Sonny: (laughs) That’s right.

Brownie: (laughs) Lets get out of this town and (inaudible).

Sonny: So Brownie starts up the car and we back on the road again.

Brownie: (sings) “On the road again.”

Sonny: (sings) “On the road again.”

Ben M: (Folkways backannounce and outro)

Sonny: --He used to drink all that liquor. He used to buy a pint you know. I’d drink half and you’d drink half. You told me, said, “Sonny let me get mine. You don’t see what you drinking. Then we’ll get drunk.” Coming down the street stagging along. He said, “Sonny, that man walk for me and I’ll see for you.” (laughs)

Brownie: But you see when I first met you Sonny I didn’t think that you had a handicap. Yeah but you was crossing highways and byways and everything. I didn’t that till—I really know until we got to New York.

Sonny: I’ve been cooking any everything. Maybe nobody would eat it but me but I was cooking.

Brownie: Remember the time you cooked the chicken with the tag on?

[rest of song]