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November 30
The son of a singer and guitarist, Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville, TN. He developed an interest in the guitar at six and was taught by his sister to play the piano at age eight. He enjoyed itinerant blues musicians and dropped out of high school in the late 1920s to perform for carnivals, minstrel shows, dances, and informal gatherings throughout Tennessee. In the mid-1930s, he led his own washboard band. McGhee first met Terry in North Carolina in 1939 and worked with him and singer Paul Robeson in Washington, D. C., in 1940. Settling in New York City in the early 1940s, he roomed with Terry and the blues musician Leadbelly, and the three played with Woody Guthrie and others as the Headline Singers. Terry and McGhee's partnership began in 1941 and lasted (with frequent interruptions) until the late 1970s. From 1942 to 1950, McGhee ran his own music school, Home of the Blues, in Harlem. McGhee's first recordings were for the OKeh label in 1940; he later recorded extensively with Terry and others, exhibiting a bona fide rural style. He appeared in Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" on Broadway (1955-57) and toured with that show. McGhee recorded several motion-picture soundtracks. He died in 1996 in Oakland, California. Reference: Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians Edited by Lawrence Cohn Copyright 1993 Abbeville Publishing Group, New York ISBN 1-55859-271-7
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The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
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