TO HEAR YOUR BANJO PLAY - Woody Guthrie's Birthday | 'John Henry' with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

 WOODY GUTHRIE

Woody Guthrie was born as Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma on this day in 1912.

Woody Guthrie with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - Ballad Of John Henry (1947) 

To Hear Your Banjo Play - Released in 1946, an engaging 16-minute introduction to American folk music, written and narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring rare performances by Woody Guthrie, Baldwin Hawes, Sonny Terry, Brownee McGhee, Texas Gladden and Margot Mayo’s American Square Dance Group.

John Steinbeck about Woody Guthrie - 

"Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people.”

 Photos of the Week

Largely musicians and classic modern art photographers I have admired . . . . . . 

Joel Meyerowitz - New York 1971

Fiona Apple  Lionel Deluy, 2012

Peter Gabriel 1972, by Clive Arrowsmith

Eric Clapton and late sixties French girlfriend Charlotte Martin

Brownie McGhee and Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Manchester UK

Bridget Fonda and Samuel L Jackson in publicity shot for Jackie Brown

SUNDAY BLUES

So one of the guys over at Voodoo Wagon ( a new fellah I think!? goes by the name of uh, one Mitchell Lopate) done posted some fine, fine blues this morning with the legendary Brownie McGhee. Now it is only relatively recently I discovered that towards the middle of their association they began to disclose they didn't get on at all which shattered this po' white boy's dreams as I loved those guys together . . . . . but I guess I love them apart too! This is a beauty! And sadly the year before he died . . . . he still cooks that Piedmont style mind you. With Sugar Blue on harmonica. Great quality too. Have at it! [well done Mitch!]

Brownie McGhee - Chicago Blues Festival 1995 - Voodoo Wagon

There are a few references to Brownie using the Piedmont style guitar playing and for anyone unfamiliar there is a helpful explanation here, simply it is a finger style with its roots in Ragtime with alternating thumb picking on the bass strings and syncopated with the forefinger on the higher strings as mastered by many but notable perhaps to two blind boys, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake. Brownie McGhee was a master too and it included my earliest favourite Josh White, Blind Boy Fuller and search out many more if you wish . . . . 

What in the heck is Piedmont Style Blues?