Interview with Brownie McGhee [Tape #003]

Side A description: Sister working for family [00:00]; Sister moves to live with mother in New York [00:33]; Brownie’s alley [01:08]; Graduation from high school [01:32]; Participation in church activities, religious schooling [02:27]; Leaves the Baptist church [06:50]; Fulbright program and polio surgery [07:48]; Brownie and brother move in with aunt in 1929 [09:36]; Mother’s death [10:41]; Living with aunt [11:22]; Aunt and uncle farming and sharecropping [12:40]; Timber harvesting, shingle making, learning to hunt and fish [13:43]; Disability and walking with a crutch [17:13]; Aunt teaches him to cook, iron, and sew [18:45]; Attending school in Vonore, Tennessee [20:40]; Sings graduation song, “I promise you” [23:40]; Built smokehouse, water from the Henley family [24:42]; Henley and McGhee families [27:04]; killing and butchering pigs [28:15]; Salt curing meats underneath house [31:30] Side B description: Canning and storing food, trading tobacco [00:00]; Tobacco and cotton farming [01:25]; Return to Kingsport, Tennessee [05:20]; Polio and insecurity fueled his hatred of women [05:40]; Girls coming to his house as a teenager [07:55]; Aunt encourages him to visit man with no legs [09:03]; Other people in town with polio [14:28]; His desire to learn to become a carpenter or lawyer [15:18]; Reading books [16:20]; No first girlfriend [17:24]; Aunt’s belief that all stringed instruments were the devil’s music [18:09]; Uncle John helped him to build a banjo [18:29]; Aunt hides his banjo in attic [20:30]; Starts to play guitar [21:19]; First guitar and first recording [24:21]; Father’s musical style and traveling [25:45]