Biography
Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and occasionally imitations of trains and fox hunts.
After his father died, he began playing with Piedmont blues–style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, Terry established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and they recorded numerous songs together. The duo became well known among white audiences during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including for collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing classic recordings for Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways).
In 1938, Terry was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the first From Spirituals to Swing concert, and later that year he recorded for the Library of Congress. He recorded his first commercial… sides in 1940. Among his most famous works are “Old Jabo”, a song about a man bitten by a snake, and “Lost John”, which demonstrates Terry's precisely honed breath control.
Despite their fame as “pure” folk artists, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee fronted a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, which was variously billed as “Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers” or “Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five”.
Terry was in the 1947 original cast of the Broadway musical comedy Finian's Rainbow. With McGhee, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. Terry also appeared in the 1985 film The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg. Terry collaborated with Ry Cooder on “Walkin' Away Blues”, and also performed a cover of Robert Johnson's “Crossroad Blues” for the 1986 film Crossroads.
Terry and McGhee were both recipients of a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. That year's fellowships were the first bestowed by the NEA.
22Songs
| Song | Year | Records |
|---|---|---|
| All Alone Blues | 2004 |
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| Beer Garden Blues | 2004 |
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| Blowing The Blues | 2004 |
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| Bottom Blues | 1981 |
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| Crow Jane Blues | 2004 |
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| Custard Pie Blues | 2004 |
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| Everybody's Blue | 1981 |
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| Fox Chase | 2004 |
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| Goin' Down Slow | 1981 |
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| Gonen, Baby, Gone | 1981 |
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| Harmonica And Washboard Breakdown | 2004 |
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| Harmonica Blues | 2004 |
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| Harmonica Stomp | 2004 |
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| Hot Headed Woman | 2004 |
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| Lonesome Train | 2004 |
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| New Love Blues | 2004 |
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| Right On That Shore | 1981 |
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| Screamin' And Cryin' Blues | 2004 |
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| Sweet Woman | 2004 |
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| Train Whistle Blues | 2004 |
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| Whoopin' The Blues | 2004 |
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| Worried Man Blues | 2004 |
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