Product Details

• Actors: Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry
• Directors: Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Studio: Grossman's Guitar Workshop
• DVD Release Date: August 7, 2003
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• ASIN: B000SOCAFQ
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #175,139 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

About the Actor

Sonny Terry started playing harp in his teens, as a blind street musician in North Carolina. After a stint with a medicine show, he hooked p with the popular ragtime singer/guitarist, Blind Boy Fuller. When he was 23 he made his recording debut, backing up Fuller. Barely a year later in 1938, he was wowing New York audiences at Carnegie Hall, appearing solo as part of John Hammond's Spirituals to Swing concert. After Fuller's death in 1940, Terry teamed with Brownie McGhee and the two began a long lived musical partnership. It took them from the socially conscious New York folk music scene of the 1940s, where they lived, worked and recorded with people like Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, to the concert halls of Europe as premier blues artists in the 1960s. Along the way Sonny's rhythmically infectious country-styled harp backed up dancers in the Broadway musical, Finian's Rainbow. Sonny and Brownie recorded copiously and were regulars in folk clubs and festivals, paving the way for today s spate of unplugged blues artist. In 1982 the duo split up and Sonny worked solo even recording an album with Johnny Winter. Terry died in 1986, leaving behind many recordings and numerous fans as well as harp players trying to duplicate his virtuosity. Sonny Terry was a true originator and a powerful entertainer.

Product Description

This video career retrospective begins with two pieces filmed for the Library of Congress in 1948, including a rendition of, John Henry, with Woody Guthrie. Pete Seeger appears as appreciative host to the duo for two songs from his, Rainbow Quest. A wonderful medley filmed in 1970 of, Red River Blues/Crow, Jane offers two of the oldest known pieces in the Piedmont blues repertoire. Sonny's signature harmonica showpiece, Whoopin' the Clues, is heard in a 1973 BBC performance, and a tour de force, Rock Island Line, closes this exciting survey of a duo who, more than anyone else, introduced a generation to the power and glory of country blues.