Brownie McGhee: Blues Is Truth

BROWNIE McGHEE: BLUES IS TRUTH (1976)

1) The Blues Had A Baby; 2) I'm Going To Keep On Loving; 3) Walk On; 4) Rainy Day; 5) Christina; 6) Don't Dog Your Woman; 7) Mean And Evil; 8) Wine Sporty Orty; 9) Blues Is Truth; 10) Bunkhouse; 11) Key To The Highway; 12) Blues On Parade.

Formally speaking, Brownie McGhee had a veritable shitload of albums released for the listening pleasures of Greenwich Village crusaders in the last four decades of his life, but most of them were released as part of the «Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee» duo act, where Sonny was usu­ally billed first and Brownie humbly came second (although there were multiple exceptions, too). In any case, we will use this as a loophole to postpone reviews of some of these albums (talking separately about each of them would be cruel and unwarranted punishment, considering that, as ru­mor has it, almost every show that the two played together in any club or cafeteria had been captured on tape, not to mention studio sessions).

As for Brownie solo, he had considerably few sessions in comparison, and most of those are not altogether easy to find or not particularly worth finding. I will limit myself to this one album, recor­ded in May 1976 with a bunch of friends at Minot Sound Studios in White Plains, NY; friends included Bobby Foster and Louisiana Red on guitars, Sugar Blue on harmonica, Sammy Price on piano, Alex Blake on bass, and Brian Brake on drums — actually, one hell of a band, when you start researching all of these guys' pedigrees, and, since Brownie himself only plays acoustic guitar and sings, his presence here is more of a «guiding hand» than of a legendary do­minator — he conducts, gives orders on soloing, but his personal role in this friendly get-together is limited; then again, when you got such a great band playing for you, keeping a low profile might just be the most sensible thing to do anyway.

As easily as I usually get bored with generic electric blues albums, these twelve songs keep the fun quotient high and the friendly atmosphere dense throughout. There is a sensible level of di­versity as they pay tribute to multiple blues styles (Chicago, Delta, New Orleans; even jump blues is covered with a version of Stick McGhee's ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Deeʼ, here retitled as ʽWine Sporty Ortyʼ), and almost everybody gets to shine one way or another — Louisiana Red and his slinky slide leads are the obvious number one pretender, but the real musical superhero of the album is Alex Blake, whose bass parts are completely individual and independent, and often have much more to say than the guitars of his colleagues.

Curiously, the album kicks off with a newly written tune, ʽThe Blues Had A Babyʼ ("and they named it rock­'n'roll"), which would fairly soon be appropriated by Muddy Waters for his come­back LP, Hard Again — considering that there is fairly little rock'n'roll on this record, but I guess that this was just a subtle reminder of sorts, Brownie's message to the kids about how there is more to life than rock'n'roll, and Blues Is Truth in general is not a bad way to prove that.

It is interesting, however, that there are no signs here whatsoever of Brownie's original vibe, the entertainment-oriented, bluesman-meets-hillbilly-style «Piedmont blues»; above everything else, Brownie knew very well who the buying clientele would be — white college kids — and what the clientele would want to hear (Chicago teachers of white electric bluesmen). I am not going as far as to suggest that ʽKey To The Highwayʼ was included due to the song's popularization by Eric Clapton, but this could have been one of the factors, too. Not that this is a complaint or any­thing — with Blake's basslines and Red's guitar playing, the album goes down easily and plea­santly, and anybody who'd try to put down a 1915-born popular entertainer for «giving the people exactly what they want» would have to have no sensibility whatsoever. In any case, for an album of this kind, Blues Is Truth is seriously above average level, and clearly deserves a thumbs up.

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Brownie McGhee: The Folkways Years

BROWNIE McGHEE: THE FOLKWAYS YEARS (1945-1959; 1991)

1) Daisy; 2) Rising Sun; 3) Careless Love; 4) Cholly Blues; 5) Just A Dream; 6) Pawn Shop Blues; 7) Hangman's Blues; 8) Livin' With The Blues; 9) 'Fore Day Creep; 10) Me And Sonny; 11) Raise A Ruckus Tonight; 12) Betty And Dupree; 13) Long Gone; 14) Grievin' Hearted Blues; 15) I'm Gonna Tell God How You Treat Me; 16) Can't Help Myself; 17) Pallet On The Floor.

In between 1945 and 1959, Brownie recorded at least six different albums of acoustic blues and «para-blues» material for Folkways records, all of them still preserved in the Smithsonian ar­chives and available if one looks really hard... but on the whole, they have been long since out of print, and the most common (and the only recommendable) way to get yourself acknowledged with Brownie's musical life throughout that period is through this generous 17-song sampler that claims to collect most of the highlights.

It is interesting, but perhaps expectable, that, unlike so many of his pals from pre-war times, McGhee never really «faded away»: he continued to release small quantities of 45s throughout the late 1940s, and then, by the early 1950s, tied a steady knot with Folkways, performing either solo (on the majority of these tracks) or as part of a guitar / harmonica duo with Sonny Terry (on a minority of the tracks, although the two went on to cut quite a few LPs together). He was, to a certain extent, marketed as a «survivor» already in the 1950s, and, along with Big Bill Broonzy and a couple other people, played the part of a wond'rous living fossil, to be admired by Village scholars and schoolboys — played it fairly well, as this collection demonstrates, because first and foremost it sounds like an honest, meticulously planned and executed «blues manual».

Unlike his earlier recordings for Columbia, where Brownie seemed too hard pressed into a single «Piedmont» formula, this Folkways stuff is, well, not exactly «all over the place», but still fairly diverse by comparison. Already the third track is a take on the old vaudeville number ʽCareless Loveʼ (which Brownie possibly picked up from Blind Boy Fuller, but which really used to be a staple for the urban blues queens in the 1920s). ʽHangman's Bluesʼ is an almost haunting shuffle, a «dark ballad» that adds intimacy, personality, and depth to Brownie's hitherto rather faceless character. ʽRaise A Ruckus Tonightʼ stems from some old minstrel show and attempts to do exac­tly what the doctor prescribed. ʽLong Goneʼ experiments a little bit with the vocals, as Brownie clones himself by echoing each of his lines, and with the guitar playing (a rather strange, hard to describe, picking style here). ʽI'm Gonna Tell God...ʼ speaks for itself — actually, it could be de­scribed as danceable «country-gospel blues», if only to pick your interest for a bit.

Some of Brownie's soloing here is quite admirable, too, particularly on extended tunes like ʽCholly Bluesʼ where you can hear proto-rockabilly chord sequences that would later be all the rage on Carl Perkins (and, subsequently, Beatles) albums; and on the comic blues number ʽDaisyʼ, he tries to transplant his subtle sense of humor into his instrument, with partial success. But, where possible, he leaves the solo spotlight to Sonny Terry (ʽLiving With The Bluesʼ), unques­tionably the more virtuoso player of the two — their friendship touchingly acknowledged in ʽMe And Sonnyʼ, which Brownie actually performs solo, perhaps as a surprise present to his friend.

Basically, if you only want a primer of Brownie's work, Folkways Years is a better bet than the pre-war recordings — better quality, not enough running time to start getting way too redundant, and both Brownie and Sonny are still well in their prime and «raisin' a ruckus» wherever possible. Neither the war nor a steady record contract were enough to transform McGhee into a jaw-drop­ping, inimitable master guitarist or a unique singer, of course, but at least this emergence as a «living blues icon» has prompted him to put down on record a more diverse and representative portfolio than ever before — so the according thumbs up go not just to him, but to Moses Asch as well, the founding father of Folkways Records, directly responsible for hours upon hours of quasi-religious joy for authentic blues aficionados.

Brownie McGhee: The Complete Brownie McGhee

BROWNIE McGHEE: THE COMPLETE BROWNIE McGHEE (1940-1941; 1994)

CD I: 1) Picking My Tomatoes; 2) Me And My Dog Blues; 3) Born For Bad Luck; 4) I'm Callin' Daisy; 5) Step It Up And Go; 6) My Barkin' Bulldog Blues; 7) Let Me Tell You 'Bout My Baby; 8) Prison Woman Blues; 9) Back Door Stranger; 10) Be Good To Me; 11) Not Guilty Blues; 12) Coal Miner Blues; 13) Step It Up And Go No. 2; 14) Money Spending Woman; 15) Death Of Blind Boy Fuller #1; 16) Death Of Blind Boy Fuller #2; 17) Got To Find My Little Woman; 18) I'm A Black Woman's Man #1; 19) I'm A Black Woman's Man #2; 20) Dealing With The Devil; 21) Double Trouble #1; 22) Double Trouble #2; 23) Woman, I'm Done.

CD II: 1) Key To My Door; 2) Million Lonesome Women; 3) Ain't No Tellin'; 4) Try Me One More Time; 5) I Want To See Jesus; 6) Done What My Lord Said; 7) I Want King Jesus; 8) What Will I Do (Without The Lord); 9) Key To The Highway 70 #1; 10) Key To The Highway 70 #2; 11) I Don't Believe In Love; 12) So Much Trouble; 13) Good-Bye Now; 14) Jealous Of My Woman; 15) Unfair Blues; 16) Barbecue Any Old Time; 17) Workingman's Blues; 18) Sinful Disposition Woman; 19) Back Home Blues; 20) Deep Sea Diver; 21) It Must Be Love; 22) Studio Chatter; 23) Swing, Soldier, Swing #1; 24) Swing, Soldier, Swing #2.

Any album that says Complete is rarely so, and, of course, this one is nowhere near a true «com­plete», not even close — but it does contain all or most of the recordings that Walter Brown McGhee, a.k.a. «Brownie», made for Okeh and Columbia Records in 1940-41. Apparently, the labels hired him because of growing demand on what would later be known as «Piedmont blues»: their chief star in that genre, Blind Boy Fuller, was selling reasonably well, but was not altoge­ther reliable (certainly not in the wake of a brief prison term in 1938, and especially after having died in 1941), so they thought it wouldn't hurt to hire one more guitar-playing kid.

Brownie, who was self-taught and also used to sing with a local harmony group in Kingsport, Tennessee, must have been one of the smoothest, steadiest, «normal-est» country blues people in existence. He cherished his rural roughness, never going for a «slick» urbanized attitude, but he never imposed that roughness on people, either — everything he plays here is supposed to enter­tain, not scare people or induce any sort of religious or just plain soulful haze. Granted, in today's world it would have hardly counted as entertainment, either, because Brownie's motto may be decoded as «nothing out of the ordinary, just 12-bar blues guitar playing and by-the-book blues singing». Disregarding slight alternations in tempos (to some of these tunes you sit and tap your foot, to some of them you jiggle and wiggle), the absolute majority of these 47 tracks are com­pletely interchangeable.

Even when Brownie pays tribute to his deceased mentor, Blind Boy Fuller, captured here in two subsequent takes, there is not a shred of extra emotion in his voice and not a single alternation in the regular chord sequences. Some might attribute this to lack of talent, others, on the contrary, will praise the man for keeping a steady footing and not allowing to sacrifice his «realistic» man­ner of performing for empty ritualistic purposes. Who really knows? But, naturally, it is best not to judge ʽDeath Of Blind Boy Fullerʼ on its own, and, instead, try to get a general feel for Brow­nie's unassuming playing over the course of those 2 CDs (although, unless you are using this for background purposes, I certainly wouldn't recommend forcing yourself to sit through all the 47 tracks at once — pretty soon you will be getting the obligatory Groundhog Day feeling).

On most of the tracks, Blind Boy is not completely alone, but fairly often he is being backed only by a washboard percussion player (Bull City Red or Washboard Slim) and/or a harmonica part­ner (Jordan Webb; later on, Sonny Terry joins in for a couple of tracks, but the real partnership be­tween Brownie and Sonny would not truly begin until after the war). The washboard adds a little extra liveliness and, considering Brownie's almost «pedantic» approach to guitar playing, some­times sounds like the actual lead instrument — but still, this is mostly a solo endeavour, and it is only because McGhee's playing technique is so similar on most of the tracks that one's attention might eventually shift to the scraping, grating, clicking, and clanging of percussion.

Most of the songs happened to be captured in pristine clarity (at least, for 1940), so there is at least one serious advantage to this package: if you want a solid, «no-nonsense», comprehensive, perfectly listenable sample of pre-war country blues, this just might be the package to get. Unless you happen to be a seriously refined blues scholar, there is nothing particularly distinctive about it, but this is also what makes these songs such a perfect primer for getting into the spirit of what it was all about — without getting carried too far away by Charlie Patton's subhuman growling, Bo Carter's obscene innuendos, Lonnie Johnson's virtuoso soloing, Blind Willie McTell's «wo­man voice», etc. etc. In addition, Brownie puts his «generic stamp» on a variety of styles — rag­time, jug band, gospel — enough to assess the general range of popular black entertainment.

So it's all quite instructive, and those who have the patience to sit through it all will be rewarded at the end with a double-take bouncy guitar duet between Brownie and Buddy Moss from October 1941, back when Buddy was freshly released from jail and eager to reclaim his status of one of the hottest players on the East Coast. However, flashy guitar sparring is simply not what this is all about — more like it's all about a handy, well-illustrated manual for every aspiring acoustic blues player. Great sound, perfect self-assurance, total lack of individual personality: the hard-to-catch «folk spirit» speaking directly to the listener. Thumbs up, if only for this strange feeling of «total impersonality» that emanates from every pore of the record.

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