Walter "Brownie" McGhee (November 30 1915 - February 16 1996) was a folk-blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee and suffered from polio as a child, which incapacitated his leg. His brother "Stick" got his nickname from pushing young Brownie around in a cart. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself the guitar. At the age of 22 he became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and meeting and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had him adopt his mentor's name, branding him Blind Boy Fuller II. By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois, but his real success did not come until his 1942 reloc