“WALK ON” - A music documentary with guitar legends Brownie McGhee and Bert Jansch

0:24 we made money we had ups and downs twists and turns and jaws and so i've never never have rehearsal they wouldn't mind us singing together but when they went to serve they wouldn't want woody to sit with us when we played we never played eight bar blue we played seven bar blues blue 11 bar blues 9 bar blues but we did it at the same time i can stay by myself i don't even even have to bother you oh well friends i guess that my only happiness is just a whole lot

1:10 hold on [Music] i can make [Music] me to cry don't pity me [Music] too flap too big don't you understand [Music]

2:06 time waits for no man you don't have to wait for me you know why [Music] cause you've always made me feel [Music] just like a heel oh all along the way [Music] i'll catch up with you catch up with you someday [Music]

3:13 don't wait for me wait about your business i'll make it [Music] brownish uh not my real name brown is my name brown walter pardon vanderville to tell you what it's all about yeah great but going to school kids call you brownie which sounds good to them yeah it was easy to send down and my daddy said brownie is a dog's name the kids just call me brownie anyway and jb long says i think brownie is a great recording name it can't be with one brownie and that's you that's what we're going to call you brownie mcgee

4:00 and that's why i got the name but i wanted to be called poor brownie no mcgee on it and we we agreed on being brownie mcgee he said anybody can be poor brownie but that can only be one brown begin that's you that's what you're gonna be and that's what i want i think this is me and sonny here yeah separated on the stage there you can't just tell what it is but that's me and sonny and they would come into the blues meeting again sam lightning hopkins sanitary and veronim japan that was our last tour i don't think it's so bad and i want to go back to to the 50s when i started

4:46 you were telling me about the first time you landed in southampton oh well yeah when i arrived in england it was 1958 and the boat landed in southampton i didn't know what to expect i thought it was just you know i'm getting off a boat never been on a boat six days when i got there the bands was playing and the music was raving and the camera was flashing and i was ducking my head and saying excuse me sorry who's it behind what you want they said you what you want me for and i thought i was in the way you and they kept trying to make pictures of me i said nobody knows me he already wanted pictures of me i was very angry about it but i had never had the red carpet before and so when this father got to me he says brandon this is all for you for

5:32 what for you know he said they welcome you here to the shore so when the boat landed in half southampton i never will forget i went drawful town i called my wife i said you ought to be glad i'm married baby because i may not come home i'd never been out of the country never been nowhere and i just couldn't believe it could happen i'd never been officiated in america i thought which i hadn't been and nobody thought anything of the blues which is america america's the blues blues is america and i am the blues so i didn't feel like i should go anywhere else until america was understanding it if they understood that they'd understand me and when i got there

6:17 it was all together a different thing in 58. i got back to uh folkway records which moash was living in he said brian what you got this time for me i said i want to record this song memories of my trip he said all right sit down and do it and the lyrics went in germany i saw berlin in london i saw big ben and scotland yard and a little square they called soho in scotland everything was fine and the water tastes just like wine but i want you to know there's some great people in glasgow they went on from there dick grimm and eddie members of chris barbara's band

7:03 monty pat and chris i'll always remember memories of my trip when the boat landed in southampton i'll always remember this from birmingham we went to bristol from bath to liverpool cheers through the years i love you one and all that was it turned out to be very successful and returning home new york times met me at the river mcgee terry you all are hit you're the greatest so they wrote up america's greatest folk blue singles

7:50 and that follows us up until this moment i'm talking to you walking down the street this morning full of my good gin a lady was in the doorway and she said hey mister why don't you come in she wanted me to clean her house move her furniture around said she would bake me a jelly roll and it would be nice and brown but she fooled me that woman fooled me well you know i got food she was jiving all the time

8:40 she said i own this apartment and i got a big blue buick seat hand all i need around here now she says is just a handyman you know what she promised me as soon as the work is due you can have your way and do anything you want to but i got fool buddy you know what i'm talking about that woman she fooled me but yes she did well you know i got them she was jiving all the time let me tell you something i went on i cleaned the house from the front to the back cleaned out every corner and i didn't even miss a crack

9:26 she promised me a kiss great big hug she said i just sleep down my stash brownie and beat my bedroom look but i got food buddy that woman she fooled me oh lord yes she did well you know i got food she was jiving all the time

10:11 let me tell you the truth about all this fooling but anyway in the evening about five o'clock i said house lady which house lady i'm through come on sit down beside me now tell me what are we really gonna do say we're gonna dance all night long have some scotch and some gym as soon as you spoke those words you know a husband come walking in i got food buddy that woman she fooled me lord yes she did well you know i got food she was jiving all the time you ever been fooled you know what i'm talking about you understand me now

10:58 yeah yeah you uh played quite a bit with well maybe you didn't play quite a bit with him but uh you knew him definitely would have guthrie yeah we uh there's a bit of film that uh i've seen yeah it was uh woody i met really after coming to new york and uh we didn't make records together because there's a few records off hand you know yeah stage presence but we didn't do records but uh i knew what he from the time i reached new york until they died we were good friends and uh we worked together we had as far as he like is a woody was a great guy he was a writer a good united writer and uh

11:45 my name is sonny played as a trio and uh he stood in the middle between me and sunny 1943 yeah they never the name of that band the streamliners no the the woody guthrie sonny terry and brownie mcgee were known as the streamlined singers right that's it back in those days and when it booked us together the streamlined singers went out three of us would work together for fifteen dollars and if you only want sunny and brown and stipulated this they'll be fifteen dollars because we were affiliated with the other groups around them we worked in different groups but the streamline thing was an individual group that's

12:30 three yeah we've taken care of the stage but if you were doing a black uh area or something well in the black area it was quite hilly yeah they wouldn't mind us singing together but when they went to serve they wouldn't want woody to sit with us but they could stand between us and play and then at times that was in him sitting down and really was very very against that and he'd started with this party and a lot of things happened he would just absolutely go while you can i can sing down between these two guys and you mean i can't sit down and eat with them and you all you know one of those type of things and and we just uh a lot of incidents that occurred not only in new york philadelphia baltimore

13:17 did he influence your writing at all not writing in all of my songs you don't find resentment but it's not out you know blues what i'm saying is what he was i was writing when i met with it but i wasn't writing you know i wasn't writing up union songs yeah political stuff yeah the uaw and the cio i didn't know but woody was writing that type of stuff and he encouraged me to go on and write my my stuff and i kept on writing because i always did write but i did uh write a lot of political stuff and it didn't come off as political but in it you'll find politics and resentment my sons have a lot of resentment in them about treatment

14:05 eating standing and living in people but it doesn't come out with this bang boom it hits you and all of a sudden you say what did he say in that verse [Music]

14:56 good man [Music] just before i go i'll leave this time baby [Music]

15:44 i'll be on my way until [Music] shores of maine [Music] middle name [Music]

16:33 one more time [Music] so [Music] let me tell you this [Music]

17:28 let's go out here [Music] where did your star a plane come from is it from your father my style of playing come from my father and really tell the truth about it i never heard nobody play button my daddy and when i came up we didn't go around too much we didn't visit too much you know many people so i thought my father invented the guitar because i only saw him play yeah and uh just for years i didn't even know

18:13 that so the way my father played i learned to play yeah that he played yeah until i got up big enough and i heard lonnie johnson on record oh my is that a man with three arms opened your eyes up and i realized that i couldn't play like my father so i had invented a style of my own which has been with me thinking with two fingers in the thumb yeah and so uh i don't know around his way so that's where my i call it a style of my own in which nobody plays like that but me does other people picks guitar and there's so many ways of playing the guitar that's many ways there are people some people sings and then plays some people playing insane

18:58 and some people sing on top of their plan so you have to identify with who is who and what is what and that's where styles are nfl [Music] what about it [Music]

19:50 did you hear what i said [Music] one more time [Music] tell me about

20:42 you got involved through him or his manager or agent well back in those days it was managing a town scout yeah and uh the same man that had blind ball fuller heard of me in burlington north carolina jb long and i was playing in the ghetto that which was to get a place called black bottom down where old cab's stand stayed open all night in them blind ball pulled his wash board play a little red heard me playing i know that's how you got it i will tell you what i was playing the first song i ever wrote this is jb long i was playing about a song i wrote about a girl i kidnapped and she left me

21:28 and she left me with that paper dog on the wall at victor dogged with no electric lights where i come from that was just an oil light and that dog haunted me for a long time after she left and so i made up some words i called it but i sing about it call me and my dog just me and my dog [Music] we don't have no friends right now [Music] live like a queen

22:15 lord but i'll get along somehow little red went back and told him he said man i hear a guy down there in the bottom playing about a dog he must love him he said i bring him up here so he come down in the bottom and says come down and meet mr long i said who is the hell is mr long he said mr long wants to tell you play some he takes photo up to make records wasn't interesting to me but after midnight i went down to jb long story i was called jb long's department store and he said play me that song about the dog i don't know what you know about the dog he said you so that was the beginning of brown and mcgee and fuller and i played in me and my dog

23:02 he said how'd you like to make records so that was the beginning of that and i would like to make records i didn't know what he started i'd make records yeah how would you like to meet blind boy fuller who was he and sonny terry who were they i didn't know anybody i was by myself he said well i'll set up a date so he can meet four and sunny so he set up a date for me to meet silly and sonny at his store jb long's department store in burlington north carolina brought him over and uh fuller played a piece and suddenly blowed the heart behind him and and he turned along to uh plus i want you to listen to brownie we discussed my name before you

23:49 so i played that piece what do you think of him fuller i said he can sing but he can't play no guitar he's a blind man well that made me angry deep down inside of me i got mad but i didn't know phil was a great recording artist but it what he said was true i imagine you know but anyway i it just kept moment on me he was a blind man telling me i couldn't play but i could sing which was an inspiration one sense and degrading any other and long said well i'm going to take him up chicago and let him make some records i think he's got something getting back to it full of past and i was called to make the death of blind ball phil and i'm quite chill with

24:34 jb long and that was big bill was making writing for it and there's another guy that knew memphis many but they took brownies there's a blind ball for her yeah see and that was the number that made me an artist the death of blind boy pulling with his own guitar [Music] he's gone [Music] blind away [Music] he's gone [Music]

25:19 blind [Music] i knew he could not stay [Music] was [Music] huh

26:06 [Music] no more [Music] southwest [Music] is [Music]

26:54 well it's hard to tell it's hard to tell now [Music] how do you want your loving done [Music] all you women are blind boys [Music] i'll do my best i'll do my best

27:39 [Music] this was a death of blind boy fuller and i had to call up jb long and asked him what it was all about because just before that he said brownie would you write a number please mr fuller don't die he's very sick and i still have the piece of paper that i was writing please mr fuller don't die on and i get the telegram say full is dead right to death of blind boy you have been

28:25 chosen to do the song come at once and on my way i wrote this song going to chicago to the death of blind ball and i had to ask j.b long that he had a lot of friends i didn't have his guitar then but he got his guitar out of the pawn shop his brother had pawn and i did the depth of blind ball fuller on the steel national guitar of blind boys and that's why i said i love that person take my guitar and camera business on and i won't stay anymore and i kept that guitar until i got to new york 19. i made a long call

29:20 i never had this feeling before i never had this feeling before don't you know the feeling that i got the letterhead brownie i don't love [Music] do [Music] so [Music]

30:30 so many ways i know that a man [Music] a telephone a telegram he's a male man [Music] i'm living in bluesville [Music] i can't believe the mailman because he left me with those [Music]

31:37 do [Music] do [Music] one more time i like that [Music]

32:24 one more time [Music] do [Music] yeah burt i won't tell you not about me and son had been together for 35 years before we quit and i met people for sunday and at the same time i met blind boy fuller but i didn't know that sonny was just a

33:10 backup for fuller jb long and reason that me and sonny got together was jb long it wasn't my idea at all because i was alone at that time and after fuller died he said brownie i wish you could see if you could do something for sonny and i was very embarrassed because see when i heard the records of sanitary and blind boy fuller together so they was recall i call him a recording artist now what can i do with a recording artist and so uh iconic physicism jv says i want you to see if you can you it's sonny i haven't got anybody

33:55 around he kept trying to tell me something but it took me a few times years to get it out of him for it huh and he said i want you to see if you can go and do something for him happen because he ain't got no better now so i only found that he only recorded with fuller when they were in the key and full of teams in the keys where his heart otherwise that he didn't so when i met sonny you only had two hearts a a and a g yeah how long was you and uh sunny together from the beginning of time until the ending of something like 35 years to be exactly a long time yeah a long time to be with a man was it

34:41 but then we had some wonderful years together and as i said how he got together was marvelous and i went to washington with him in the library of congress for him to make records for the library of congress and he'd come back sonny and browning picked up some wonderful contracts up there we got contacts to come to new york that's why we got to new york we got to new york started ronnie mcgee never was a team nobody knew this and uh everybody wanted to know what's he doing with it wasn't the matter who's going to do what it's a matter what people thought because what we did was the beginning of a nation did you did you go from state to state with well we did yeah

35:27 went from state to state but we put after i realized that it was a matter of gripping and going together you can't go against someone and go somewhere you got to go the same way and i realized that's what you had to do in new york we played five years on the streets did you go from state to state uh like that no i'm not hitchhiking no that was mine i'm lame i started in harlem playing on the streets together me and saw sonny and we built a thing there people began to realize that we went to the village together and uh then suddenly began to sing his songs i began to sing minds of the kid more and more and more

36:12 and they thought they began to think more and more we were team but i never told them it wasn't they kept sanitary and brown maybe brownie year solidarity you never had a contract went to england and senator and browning brown sanitary we never had a contract between us and [Music] we made money we had ups and downs twists and turns and jaws and so i've ever never had rehearsal i rehearse and play something else so music is to be played not read and our best performance was when we're rehearsing it's on the stage and i want to play the first song that me and sonny ever sing together he's not here and just a little bit of it it's called stranger blues

36:59 and they had to come to sonny's house with the machine and recorders because sonny didn't know he could sing with us or monika you better listen to me now and this is the song i'm a stranger just go in your town well yes i am i'm a stranger in your town [Music] where because [Music]

37:59 so [Music] first song me and sunny l recorded together singing as a duet become a standard in our walks of life becoming our singing traditional the highs and the lows ups and downs and what i'm going to tell you two wrongs make a right listen to me nice history two wrongs make a right provide you make the wrongs at the same time it's an undeniable education and that was a policy that i followed

38:46 if he played the wrong chord i played the wrong chord got to be right and we played that in life and you can let down now and i can sit down and tell you every mistake that we made but we made them at the same time when we played we never played eight bar blues we played seven bar blues thirteen more blue live bar blues nine bar blues but we did it at the same time made it a perfect setting so that become the dinner the dessert the beginning and the ending of a concert two wrongs make the right provide you make the wrongs at the same time come to reach perfection

39:36 see [Music] see [Music] where you made me love you now your man [Music]

40:35 you come home [Music] be a shotgun [Music] am lord i ain't gonna shoot you because you don't love me i'm gonna murder you because [Music]

41:41 yep three [Music] do [Music]

42:30 a little bit [Music] do [Music] i'm gone upon the mountain all alive

43:17 [Music] trying to get my boy [Music] and i won't be back [Music]

44:07 if i find me a good i won't be taking time [Music] let's do it together [Music]

45:10 do [Music] cc rider [Music] out of sight killing me but that's the best way to do it you lived with lead belly for a while didn't you well we live with lead sonny and i both live with led belly and we recorded you know we we made one good record together i call it one good luck the other guy was all bled bella and woody guthrie's son and

45:56 ted brown mcgee and uh a jazz piano player and uh they did release it and i came out with little belly singing sonny singing and me singing because woody didn't say he just played his violin i mean they're not as violent as manila and i lived with lead for a year and then led us to go out and play at uh at hotels because when you was at that time when lead was living you could go from table tables to guitar and sing to people sonny wasn't there at the time and then and i would go to the world of story up on top where people sit down and quiet picnics

46:43 you know what it was we go to the table the same folk songs and blues that they asked for sometimes there's caves and they'd laugh and things like that i only got 10 bucks but it was 10 bucks well and living with lead i appreciated him so much like me and son was living in new york he says you guys ain't getting enough to eat the beauty about it he says y'all service and y'all can't eat pumpkin nickel bread and eggs and survive come over and live with me and baby which was his wife martha we got that was a cold water flat that led lived in 604 east 9th street in new york city down on the extreme east side he said i've got three rooms here a

47:29 bedroom kitchen in the living room and sonic can have the living room me and be able to keep the bedroom with shadow kitchen when i eat you can eat and when you get a little money give baby some to help us alone how better could a man be [Music] oh [Music]

48:17 when my shoes get thin i don't know where i'm going but i do know [Music]

49:14 i don't know what in the world i'm sitting around here [Music]

50:16 welcome just [Music] hey [Music] um

51:09 well after more than 30 years of playing guitar and he was almost the first blues in real life player i'd ever seen at close range as close as this is to me and ever since then he's been a an idol mean he's been revered by me you know and to play with him was just an extraordinary sensation i mean i never ever thought i'd ever play with him in my life no and i'm very very proud to be able to have done so

51:57 yeah have a good time welcome keep the faith all men can't be done too much be sure you leave footprints in the center top and find which way you went you know how to go back blues is truth don't forget that [Music]

52:50 you