Sonny Terry Whoopin’ The Blues 1958–1974

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 up 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 up 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 forties, 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 of the sixties. Sonny and Brownie recorded copiously and were regulars in folk clubs and at festivals, paving the way for today’s spate of “unplugged” blues artists. In 1982 the duo split up and Sonny worked solo, even recording an album with Johnny Winter.

Sonny Terry died in 1986, leaving behind many recordings and numerous fans — as well as harp players trying to duplicate his virtuosity. He was a true originator and a powerful entertainer.