Singin' the Blues in Kingsport

 

Legendary Blues Singer and Guitarist Brownie McGhee 

Brownie McGhee finally got his due.

McGhee, blues singer and guitarist extraordinaire, half of the famed duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and household name in Europe, finally got a plaque on Kingsport’s Broad Street.

McGhee is practically unknown in his hometown of Kingsport but he is well-known all over the world for his musical accomplishments.

He played with virtually every famous blues musician of the twentieth century from Blind Boy Fuller to Leadbelly. (He even shared a New York loft with Leadbelly and his wife for two years.)

He recorded hundreds of songs – he didn’t even know how many – for a couple of dozen different labels, from Okeh (a division of Columbia) to Folkways and Mercury. He had a Billboard Top 5 hit with “My Fault” in 1948. He performed in Carnegie Hall and at the Newport Folk Festival. 

Until last month when the Tennessee Music Pathways project erected his plaque in Glen Bruce Park he had never been fully recognized in Kingsport.

But Kingsport is where he got his musical start. He says in his autobiography, a ten-page section of a 1971 guitar instruction manual that he authored with folk singer Happy Traum, that the first theater he ever played in was the Gem on Main Street.

Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville on Nov. 30, 1915 to George “Duff” McGhee and Zella Henley McGhee. The McGhees moved to Kingsport the next year when George found work at the Federal Dyestuff plant. On his 1917 draft registration card George said they were living in “Dye Plant Camp,” which was located where Riverview now stands.

In the 1920 census they had moved to Maple Street and now had four children, daughters Ella, 8, and Vedia, 6, and sons Brownie, 4, and Granville, 1. A year later a Kingsport Times story reported they were living on Oak Street.

Brownie writes that he contracted polio around this time. His brother Granville would push him around town in a wagon using a stick, and thus Granville would become known as Stick or Sticks. (Brownie calls him “Sticks” in his autobiography; Granville’s family-written obituary in the Kingsport Times News in 1961 also called him “Sticks.”)

Sticks would become a famous musician in his own right, composing and recording “Drinking Wine Spo-dee-o-dee,” and deserving of his own Tennessee Music Pathways plaque. (We will leave that argument for another day.)

Granville "Sticks" McGhee, left, playing with brother Brownie McGhee

In 1922 George and Zella McGhee separated. “My song ‘Born With The Blues’ is true,” Brownie would write. “I'm from a broken home.”

 He says neither he nor Granville received any musical training growing up. “During the time that I was coming up, you understand, they figured that a boy child didn't need an education, he was going to earn his living by manual labor. But my two sisters were given music. My father gave my sisters a piano and imported a man for fifty miles to give them lessons. They never learned, so he gave me and my brother the piano, figured we'd tear it up and get it out of the house, but we learned to pick out notes on it. So the piano was my first love, although I was exposed to the guitar at the same time. I really started by playing a Prince Albert tobacco can with rubber bands on it. I would strike those strings and beat it with the back of my hand. My father would play his guitar. This was when I was a little kid, maybe six or seven years old.”

Brownie didn’t let his physical handicap slow him down. He attended Douglass School, then located on East Center, and participated in Choir and Drama. In March 1935 he was part of a Douglass musical group that went to Nashville to compete in the state quartet singing competition (they finished third). Other members of the group were Hubert Armstrong, Simpson Brown (father of basketball star Skip Brown) and Caldwell Hemphill.

Brownie notes, “What little money my father had saved, why he spent it all trying to rid me of that infantile paralysis, which was never successful.”

Nurse Kate Fullbright, center in apron, helped Brownie get surgery on his leg. 

It took a sympathetic Kingsport School system nurse, Kate Fullbright, to get him treatment. “I had crutches and a cane until I was 18 or 19 years old. Then I met up with a fabulous lady out of Texas, Mrs. Fullbright. She was the nurse at the Negro schools at the time, and she figured I could be helped and get rid of the crutches and cane, which she did. She met a German doctor at the time of Roosevelt's administration when the March of Dimes was started (he was a victim of polio too), and she said, ‘Brownie, I think I can help you. Would you like to walk without crutches or a cane?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would love that.’ So, my case was taken, and this German doctor operated on me around '35 or '36, and today instead of having my foot five inches from the ground it's an inch and a quarter. No crutch and no cane, pretty good.”

By now Brownie was playing guitar anywhere and everywhere he could around town: at school, in church, at house parties and barbecues. Then he heard about a talent contest. “I had a fellow playing with me called Lesley Riddle. He played mandolin, guitar, and piano, and I played piano and guitar. The first theater I ever worked was the Gem Theatre in Kingsport. Him and me did that song, ‘What's The Reason That I'm Not Pleasin' You,’ and ‘Roll Out The Barrel, We’ll Have a Barrel of Fun’ and we won the ten bucks!”

It could have been this 1937 talent contest that Brownie and Lesley Riddle entered. 

That was all the impetus Brownie needed. He soon hit the road, walking and hitch-hiking, seeking his fortune as a wandering minstrel. At first Lesley Riddle went with him. “But he turned around and come back. So that got me on the adventure of continuing on.”

From Kingsport he made his way east to Winston-Salem and Greensboro and Burlington, where he met up with a talent scout for Okeh Records, J.B. Long, who signed him to a contract.

“One of my records was put on the back of one of Blind Boy Fuller’s, and that turned out to be a big seller. ‘Fuller's Bus Rider Blues’ and my ‘Me and My Dog’ were back to back.”

“The Dog” of the title didn’t refer to an actual dog but to a piece of cardboard with the RCA logo dog that Brownie had found and tacked on his wall in Kingsport.

It was also during his stay in North Carolina that he met a blind harmonica player from Georgia named Saunders Terrell. He and Terrell, who was known on stage as Sonny Terry, would play together off and on, mostly on, for the rest of their lives. The partnership was good for both of them.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in a 1960 promotional photo.

“My first professional job with Sonny Terry was May 20, 1942 with Paul Robeson in Riverside Stadium in Washington, D.C. I had met Leadbelly by this time. Sonny was coming up to do this show with Paul Robeson, and they wanted to know if there was somebody else that would bring Sonny along. So I come up with Sonny, and when I got there I was put on the show.”

The concert was a benefit for the Highlander School in Monteagle, Tennessee, and Robeson thought it would be appropriate to have someone from Tennessee on the bill.

“I did ‘Kansas City’ and I really got a kick and a bang out of it. I had studied about Paul Robeson in school, and being on stage with him was such a gas.”

That was the beginning of a long and successful career in music. Over the next five decades Brownie performed and recorded with all the big names in blues and folk music.

“When I came to New York I had met everybody - Pete Seeger, Josh White, Lee Hays, Betty Sanders, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Sis Cunningham.”

He was in two Broadway shows, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Langston Hughes “Simply Heaven.” (He rehearsed for a month to be in a third, “All Yours” starring Woody Guthrie. But a petulant Guthrie refused to show up for opening night because of a disagreement with the director and the show never opened. Brownie wasn’t concerned. “I was getting forty-five dollars a week for rehearsing, which was a lot of money in 1942.”)

Mick and Keith (yeah, those two from the Rolling Stones) told Anthony Mason on “CBS Sunday Morning” in 2016 that they found blues music through Sonny and Brownie. “Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee was the first blues people I saw on TV when I was really young,” Mick said.

Mick and Keith have known about Brownie McGhee for years. Now at last all of Kingsport knows about him thanks to that plaque on Broad Street.  

To hear Brownie's recording of "Me and My Dog" click on the image below or paste the link below it in your browser if the image doesn't show up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztC37-tnI_c

To hear his hit record "My Fault" click on the image below or paste the link link below it in your browser if the image doesn't show up on your screen:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29jUlXW53c

Brownie’s Kingsport addresses:

In 1917 the McGhee family was living in the Dye Plant Camp, approximately where Riverview is today.

In the 1920 census they had moved to Maple Street. And in a 1921 Kingsport Times news story they were now on Oak Street.

In the 1935 City Directory the McGhees were living at 905 Walnut.

When “Walter Brownie McGhee” registered for the draft in 1942, he was living at 814 Walnut Street, Apartment 3, in Kingsport and listed his employer as O.K. Recording Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He named his father George as his contact at 905½ East Sullivan. His draft card said he was 5’8” and weighed 155 pounds.

Academic Stars of the 30s

 

In 1935 and 1936 the Kingsport Times published a weekly – or almost weekly – page called “D.B.H.S. Highlights.” It was the equivalent of the school newspaper with a rotating cast of editors and writers.

Many future famous names made appearances on the masthead of that weekly news page, from future surgeon Shelton Reed to future photographer Tommy McNeer. (Miss Ruth Ramer was the faculty advisor.)

I was taken by a column in the Kingsport Times of Nov. 10, 1935 titled ODDS AND ENDS by Eckel Fuller.

Fuller would go on to graduate from Teachers’ College, as ETSU was called then, serve in World War II, obtain a Masters from ETSU and go on to teach Tennessee History at Sevier. He retired in 1978. (His wife Juanita Fuller was my Trigonometry teacher at D-B.)

But in 1935 Eckel was a junior at D-B when he penned this column:

 

Approximately 19.4 per cent of last year's graduates went to college.

The highest grade ever made for a four year's average at D. B. H. S. was made by Elaine Neufer with an average of 95.9. Sam Williams holds second place with a grade of 95.3. The former student graduated in 1933 and the latter in 1935.

There were 97 more students enrolled at the end of the first month this year than there were at the end of the first month last year.

Robert Shetterley holds the record of having earned the greatest number of K's for one year. He received six K's in the year 1931-32.

This school was the first one to give recognition to the various activities in school by letters.

This was begun in 1930.

 

 

I wanted to know what happened to these academic stars.

My first thought about Bob Shetterley winning 6 letters was football, basketball, baseball, track and what else?

Not even close.

In May 1932 Shetterley was awarded K’s for basketball, academics, dramatics, debate, band and orchestra.

Robert Shetterley’s father, Dr. Fred F. Shetterley, came to Kingsport in 1920 to run the new Corning Glass Works. (The family lived in the White City.) He was transferred back to Corning, New York in 1931 but Robert stayed on through graduation. He then rejoined his family in New York. In 1936 he graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in English literature. He immediately started with Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati and stayed with the company for his entire career. He began in the advertising department before becoming manager of the Food Productions Division. At one time he headed P&G’s Clorox division. He retired from Clorox in 1982 as chairman of the board. He died in 1997 in Cincinnati. (His son, also named Robert, is a portraitist known for his series painted after 9/11 and called “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” It was turned into a juvenile book in 2006.)

The family last name is spelled both Shetterley and Shetterly.  

 

 

Sam W. Williams, the fellow with the second highest academic average, went to Berea College after graduating as valedictorian of the class of ‘35. He spent his entire career as an auditor at Kingsport’s First National Bank. (Hugh Kyle Still, D-B ’64, was his nephew.)

 

 

Elaine Neufer, who graduated from D-B in 1933 (as valedictorian, of course), went to Tusculum where in 1935 she won the Lillie Fowler Lovette Memorial Prize ($25) for her essay on “Woman’s Position in East Tennessee as Affected by the Tennessee Valley Development.” She told the Kingsport Times that she was active in Tusculum’s Creative Writing Club and intended to pursue a career in writing.

Did Elaine Neufer become a writer?

The Times News answered that question in a 1965 feature story titled: "I Only Wish Elaine Could Have Known”

The unbylined story:

 Genius, according to an old adage, is seldom recognized in the living.

During much of her lifetime, from about the age of 14 until she died at 43 in 1961, Miss Elaine Neufer wrote poetry. None of it was ever published, with one exception. One short poem was published in a magazine of the Episcopal Church.

After Miss Neufer's death, her high school Latin teacher, Miss Grace Elmore, and Miss Neufer's niece, who works for a printing firm, decided to surprise her mother.

Miss Elmore still had a poem Elaine had written as a term project when she was 14.

The niece took the poem to have a dozen copies made as a Christmas present for Mrs. Neufer.

Miss Elmore kept two copies of the booklet.

Last year, Dr. Austin Lashbrook, head of the classical department at the University of Kansas was married. As part of her wedding gift, Miss Elmore sent one of the booklets.

Dr. Lashbrook, one of the editors of the Classical Journal, the publication written by college and university professors, wrote a letter to Miss Elmore telling her Elaine's classical poem would be published in the January issue of the magazine.

"I couldn't have had a better Christmas present,” Miss Elmore said. "I had wanted Elaine to publish it for a number of years, but somehow it never happened during her lifetime. I only wish she could have known.”

The poem, "The Love of Dido and Aeneas," shows a wisdom far beyond her 14 years.

A small portion reads:

Oh, Virgil, it was thine to paint the strife,

The agony, the weary leaden toil,

The hurt, the grief, the lonely bitter tears

On which the Roman state upreared its bulk,

Proud ruler, haughty mistress of the world,

Its solid walls built on its patriot dead.

Great Virgil, thou didst know the way to fame,

Though all that way were marked by weary death.

The publishers of the Classical Journal said in a note to Elaine's mother, Mrs. Dena O. Neufer, “The poem is a remarkable accomplishment and a beautiful monument to Elaine's understanding and imagination.”

"Elaine's dream from the time she entered Dobyns-Bennett, shortly after we came to Kingsport was to be a writer," Mrs. Neufer said.

But when she entered college, she became discouraged. After two years she quit college to go to work at Eastman, where she became a senior chemist.

In 1960 she guest wrote a book review for the Times-News on "Oedipus and Akhnaton, Myth and History," by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky.

After the review appeared, the author wrote Elaine telling her she had written the best review on his book he had seen.

"She read everything she could find about (humanitarian) Dr. Tom Dooley after she discovered she, too, had malignant melanoma," Mrs. Neufer said.

After her death, a friend made a tape recording of her brother reading Elaine's one published poem, "The Maget," for her mother.

"It's really a devotional record," she said. "He read a prayer, and then the 23rd Psalm, and then the poem. People who have heard it have been deeply impressed.”

The poem begins:

As the needle turns to the north,

As the plant turns to the sun,

I turn to Thee.

As the tree lifts it branches,

As the flame burns upward,

I aspire unto Thee.

It ends as the story of Elaine Neufer must end:

In this is all said that can be said.

The heart falls silent ---

And the silence forever and ever is singing, singing.

 

That Darn Kid

 Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child

Mrs. Stultz's 5th grade class. Michael Richmond was, of course, absent the day of pictures. 

Mrs. Stultz didn’t even look over when Michael Richmond inched open the door to room 20 at Johnson Elementary and tiptoed back to his seat that spring day in 1958. Mike passed down the row, his eyes firmly fixed on the floor. No one looked at him, no one made eye contact. He was the Invisible Boy. Mike had just returned from Mr. Milam’s office - Mr. Milam was the principal.

Half an hour later on the playground all the boys gathered round Mike. “What happened?” we asked.

“I got paddled,” Mike replied, a bit of defiance in his voice.

“He paddled you?” Everyone looked at each other.

“Why?” some brave kid asked. 

“I said ‘darn’.”

“Oh,” was the unison reply.

In 1958, at Johnson School, Michael had uttered the forbidden word “darn” and paid the ultimate price: a sore butt for the rest of the day.

I asked my son on the phone the other night if he ever knew anyone who got a paddling. He laughed. “Nobody ever got paddled,” he said. “That doesn’t happen anymore, Dad.”

It sure used to happen. A lot. I could make a list of the kids I know who got paddled in grade school.

One got paddled for shooting a paper wad that missed its target and hit the teacher.

Another - a girl - got it for back-talking to the teacher.

There were paddlings for climbing over the seats in the auditorium, for accidentally tripping the teacher and for intentionally dropping an ink pen cartridge off the balcony onto Coach Shepherd.

Stab another kid with a pencil - it happened - and take a trip to the principal’s office.

The most amazing paddling offense during my school years belonged to a boy in my sixth-grade class who was spanked for drawing a picture of a naked woman on the arm of the girl who sat in front of him.

Today that wouldn’t get you a whipping. A jail term maybe.

Corporal punishment is pretty much dead. But in my day spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child had not yet been supplanted in Kingsport by Dr. Benjamin Spock’s permissive philosophy of child rearing.

In Kingsport, in the fifties, if you acted up, you couldn’t sit down for a couple of hours.

Tom Milam took over as principal at Johnson from Hugh Pardue for my fifth grade year. It was a position Mr. Milam - I still call him Mr. Milam - held for 31 years. I called him back in 2004 to ask about Michael Richmond. He told me he didn’t remember the “darn” paddling. “But we had a definite policy then. A teacher could paddle or I could but we only did it as a last resort. If the teacher did it, she had to report it to me. And we had a rule that you could only use one of the ball-bat paddles - on the rear - and you could only administer three licks.”

A lot of kids got paddled for a lot of different things during Mr. Milam’s 31 years but he said most paddlings were for the same offense. “One of the main things I was adamant about was a boy that acted like a bully. I wouldn’t put up with that for a minute. If I spotted one boy picking on another boy just to pick on him, I wouldn’t put up with it. I talked to him first and if that didn’t work, I would use the paddle and that usually took care it.” He said he wouldn’t have paddled Michael just for saying “darn.” “It would have been the end of a long line of offenses.”

Paddling took care of Johnson’s darn problem. I never heard Mike say “darn” again. And I, for sure, never said it.

After Mike reported the details of his paddle-able offense, the boys surrounding him had one more question.

“Did Mr. Milam use the electric paddle?”

Mike looked off in the distance, seemingly distracted. “No. No, he didn’t use the electric paddle.”

Whew. We all breathed a sigh of relief, mumbling to each other, “He didn’t use the electric paddle. He didn’t use the electric paddle.”

Half a century later, I had to ask Mr. Milam. “We always heard rumors that if you were really bad, that the principal had the ultimate punishment locked away in his closet. The electric paddle.”

He laughed. “Children can really dream up things.”

Then he added, “I’m 79 and when I was a boy I heard the rumor of a steam-powered paddle.”

 

 

 

Mrs. Stultz, Kathryn Stultz, was a stern teacher but I liked her. She would always read to us for a half hour after lunch. She introduced me to many famous authors but in particular Pearl Buck. I especially remember her reading “The Good Earth.”

On my first report card she wrote, “It is a pleasure to have Vincent in my class.”

By the fifth grading period she had me figured out: “Vincent should be trying to improve his handwriting and make his papers a little neater.” She gave me C’s in Handwriting almost every six weeks. But she wasn’t alone in that respect. She also gave me all A’s in Reading and Spelling.

She died in 1999 at age 81. She had been 39 my fifth grade year.

Mr. Milam retired from Johnson in 1988. He lived in Kingsport until his death at age 85 in 2009.