Sonny Terry

Sonny Terry was was born Saunders Terrell on October 24th, 1911. He lost his sight as a teenager and turned to music as a way to earn a living, working with famed Piedmont blues guitarist Blind Boy Fuller early in his career. He later formed a famous (and often contentious) partnership with Brownie McGhee. The two would reach a wider audience and acclaim during the ‘50s and ‘60s with the folk boom and growing interest in the blues and his lively, whooping harmonic style would become a trademark of their sound.

Among his other credits, Terry appeared in the first Spirituals to Swing concert in Carnegie Hall in 1938, in the 1947 Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow, and in the films The Color Purple and The Jerk.

Sonny Terry tells the (funny) story behind his famous “Shoutin’ the Blues” and then performs the song: www.folkstreams.net/film,155

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (from Pete Seeger’s television show) with “Key to the Highway”:

Key Albums

Sonny Terry’s Washboard Band Folkways, 1955)
Folk Songs of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Roulette, 1958)
Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing (Folkways, 1958)
Sonny & Brownie (A&M Records, 1973)
Whoopin’ (feat. Johnny Winter & Willie Dixon) (Alligator, 1984)
Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing
(Smithsonian Folkways, 1990)
Whoopin’ the Blues: The Capitol Recordings, 1947-1950
(Capitol, 1995)
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee - Backwater Blues
(Fantasy, 1999)