Brownie McGhee-RARE Vintage Signed Photograph

Description: 10X8 Vintage B&W glossy photograph signed in blue ballpoint ink by, "To Jim Wiggins, Brownie McGhee 7-11-85". In excellent condition. (1915-1996) Brownie McGhee was an American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. At about the age of four, he contracted polio, which incapacitated his right leg. His brother Granville "Stick" McGhee, who also later became a musician and composed the famous song "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee," was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. Their father, George McGhee, was a factory worker, known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with a local harmony group, the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet, and teaching himself to play guitar. He also played the five-string banjo and ukulele and studied piano. Surgery funded by the March of Dimes enabled McGhee to walk.At the age of 22, McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records promoted McGhee as "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2". By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942 when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939, when Terry was Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success. They recorded and toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Terry and McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring and recording dozens of albums.McGhee and Terry were both recipients of a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. That year's fellowships were the first bestowed by the NEA. One of McGhee's last concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival. He died of stomach cancer on February 16, 1996, in Oakland, California, at the age of 80. This lot came from the Jim Wiggins collection we purchased in July 2022. Jim Wiggins accumulated the most unique and valuable autograph collection over a period of 70-plus years. He obtained his collection either in person or by writing to persons of fame and notoriety. Comes with a full Letter of Authenticity from Todd Mueller Authentics.

Price: 1500 USD

Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado

End Time: 2024-12-23T18:33:13.000Z

Shipping Cost: 25 USD