I had spotted the Hohner harmonica while digging through a box lot of junk in back of an auction house this week. There were about 10 long rows, a field of brown water-soaked boxes (and other items) drying in the sun.
The harmonica/blues harp was in one of them. I had left it there but wrote down which row it was in. As the auctioneer got closer, I went back to the box to make sure the harmonica hadn’t accidentally dropped itself into someone’s pocket. I stooped to the ground, combed through the box again and found it.
On one side was engraved “M. Hohner. Blues Harp. Made in Germany.” It had a few rust spots and a few dents, but overall it was in good shape. I got the blues harp and a neat vintage black oscillating fan for $10.
I was very familiar with the Hohner name; the company has been making harmonicas for more than a century. I once picked up a vintage Marine Band harmonica at auction. Let’s just say I love harmonicas and their sounds.
As I examined the blues harp, another auction-buyer walked up, someone whom I had chatted with a few minutes before. He had sought me out then to apologize for out-bidding me on a 35mm Canon Rebel EOS camera that he desperately wanted for his 6-year-old son, who had surprised him with his knack for photography.
He approached me this time to talk about the blues harp. “I have another story to tell,” he said. “You can tell I’m from New England.” He has lived in the New Jersey area, though, for 45 years, he pointed out.
When everyone else was into the Beatles in the 1960s, said the man, rail-thin with a gray scraggly beard, he was into Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. He remembered them as Mississippi Delta blues musicians. I had never heard of them, which isn’t surprising since there have been so many southern blues singers.
I was now curious about Terry (and McGhee), who had not only mastered this instrument but had transformed it. Terry is said to have used the Marine Band harmonica.
From my research, I found that Terry and McGhee were actually blues singers from Tennessee and North Carolina, respectively. As folk blues musicians during the 1950s and 1960s, the duo was a favorite among white audiences – hence, the auction-goer. During their earlier years, though, they were playing the blues for rural black folks. Terry was a singer known for interspersing his harmonica-playing with hoops and hollers. McGhee was a singer who played the guitar. (The auction-goer told me that he plays the guitar.)
The two first met around 1939 when they both played for blues guitarist Blind Boy Fuller, who influenced both of them. McGhee was Fuller’s protégé and recorded a song about him – “The Death of Blind Boy Fuller” for Okeh Records – when he died in 1941.
The pair’s backgrounds were not so different. Born four years apart one decade after the turn of the 20th century, both grew up with disabilities.
As a child, McGhee contracted polio, which affected his legs, according to wikipedia. As a result he could not work in the fields and took to music. In the 1930s, the March of Dimes paid for an operation that allowed him to walk. He hooked up with Terry in New York in 1942, and their collaboration lasted until around 1980. Terry’s father taught him to play the blues harp, according to wikipedia. By the age of 16, he had lost his eyesight and music became his salve.
Terry and McGhee collaborated with Woody Guthrie and others, and recorded classics for what is now Smithsonian/Folkways (at the time it was Folkways Records). They appeared in several movies alone and together as musicians, including “The Jerk (1979),” “The Color Purple (1985)” and “Angel Heart (1987).”
Terry died in1986, and McGhee died about 10 years later.
I got a chance to listen to some of their music and they’re smoking. Give a listen:
Various cuts by Brownie McGhee
Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee’s “Walk On”
Video of Terry singing “Hooting the Blues”
