Ramblin' Through The Blues - Arlo Guthrie & Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

In this 8th Episode in the 'Ramblin' Through The Blues Series, I look at the storytellers of the Blues world.  I've chosen a wonderful combination of artists. The contrast between the wit and storytelling of Arlo Guthrie and the warm, conversational musicianship of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. From the infamous littering incident behind Alice's Restaurant Massacree to the lifelong friendship and musical partnership of Sonny and Brownie.  Music is also provided by Chester Malone with his track 'World Gone Bad' and Will Harrison's track, 'Catchin' Every Breeze'.  The theme music is 'Late Night Ramble' by River Run Dry.  All music has been provided by Epidemic Sound.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello there and welcome to episode 8 of my Rumbling Through the Blues, the podcast where we wandered down the back roads, dusty highways, and musical byways of America's greatest musical tradition, the blues. I was at a party recently and my friend Tim started talking about our respective childhoods and specifically the way that our fathers had told us stories. We both acknowledged that when we were very small, we believed every word that we were told, and as we got older, we began to take each story with a pinch of salt. Interestingly, we'd both adopted the same, shall I call it, degree of embellishment in the stories that we told our children. Once a story that my dad told my brother Pip and I revolved around a German pilot crash landing in the waste ground not far from where my dad lived during the Second World War. It was late in the evening when the Mesersmith was first heard. Its engine clearly sounded like it was malfunctioning, and the pilot was circling, looking for somewhere to safely put down. Word had got around regarding the plane's condition, and a large gathering of locals had begun to build up. When the plane eventually hit the ground, the crowd rushed towards the site, some picking up souvenir debris and some baying for the pilot's blood. This was one of the enemy after all. As a member of the home guard, Dad decided that it was his responsibility to take control of the situation, and much to the relief of the pilot, Dad arrested him and took him to the local police station. As you can imagine, Pip and I dined out on this story for many years, but as we got older and realised that some of the stories that Dad told us weren't completely true, we began to doubt his tale of daring bravery. Many years later, I was a member of the residence committee where I lived, and at one of the meetings, an elderly resident began to record the tale of the home guard guide that arrested the jerry pilot when that plane crashed at the top of Ayles Lane. My ears picked up immediately. That home guard guide could well have been our dad, and his story maybe wasn't embellished after all. Sharing tales of our childhood with Tim gave me the idea of dedicating this episode to three artists who have successfully used the art of storytelling in their music to entertain us over the years. Those artists are Arlo Guthrie, who wasn't known specifically as a blues artist, but whose music carries the spirit of folk traditions that often ran alongside the blues, and two giants of Piedmont Blues, Sonny Terry and Brony McGee. Let's begin with Arlow Guthrie. On the 10th of July 1947, in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn, Harlow Guthrie was born into one of America's most fascinating artistic families. His dad was the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, and his mum, Marjorie Matsia Guthrie, was a dancer with the Martha Graham Company, who later founded what became the Huntington's Disease Society of America. Harlow was the fifth of Woody's eight children, and the oldest who survived into adulthood. Several of his siblings and half-siblings died young, including two who, like Woody himself, were lost to Huntington's disease. His sister Nora Guthrie, who many people know as a record producer and keeper of the Guthrie family legacy, is still very much a part of his life. His family background was a real blend of cultures. Woody came from a Baptist family with English and Scottish roots, while Arlow's mother was Jewish, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants. His grandmother was the Yiddish poet Elisa Greenblatt and country and Western singer Jack Guthrie, who died when Arlo was still a baby, was a cousin once removed. Growing up, Arlow actually studied for Izb Mitzvah with Rabbi Mia Kahan. Yes, the same Mia Kahan who later founded the Jewish Defence League and was convicted of multiple acts of terrorism in the United States and in Israel. Arlo was joked that Kahan was a kind, patient teacher at the time, but shortly after he started giving me my lessons, he started going, heywire, maybe I was responsible. Arlo's spiritual journey didn't stop there. He converted to Catholicism in the late 70s and over the years he's embraced a much more interfaith inclusive way of thinking. In 2015 he said he believed different religious traditions can live comfortably within one person, or even within one nation or one world. Now that's a thought, isn't it? After retiring from touring in twenty twenty, Harlow talked about how much gospel music speaks to him. He called it the biggest genre of protest music, saying that if this world isn't giving you what you need, you should be placing your hope in the next one. Well, that's a pretty powerful form of protest. Harlow grew up in Brooklyn, going to the Woodward School in Clinton Hill from first through eighth grade, and graduated from the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts in 1964. That same summer, he headed off to London where he met music journalist Carl Dallas, who introduced him to the city's folk rock scene. The two stayed friends for the rest of Dallas's life. After that, Harlow briefly tried college life at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, before drifting back to the path everyone probably expected of him: music, activism, and storytelling. Over the years, he picked up a couple of honorary doctorates, one from Siena College in 1981, and another from Westfield State in 2008. And of course, Arlo didn't just inherit his father Woody Guthrie's musical talent, he carried on the activist spirit too. His work as a singer, songwriter, and political voice earned him the Peace Habbies Courage of Conscience Award in 1992, a recognition that really underscored how deeply he'd woven social justice into his life and art. Harlow married twice, in 1969 to Jackie Hyde, and in 2021 to Marty Ladd. Harlow and Jackie had four children together, Abe, Annie, Sara Lee, and Kathy. They were married for 43 years before Jackie passed away from liver cancer in 2012. Harlow and Marty began a relationship shortly after Jackie's death, and they were married in 2021. I'd suggest that his most famous song is Alice's Restaurant Massacre, commonly known as Alice's Restaurant, which was released in October 1967 as the title track on his 1967 debut album of the same name. It's a satirical talking blues song protesting against the Vietnam War draft in the form of a comically exaggerated but largely true story from Guthrie's own life. Its popularity inspired a film in 1969, and in 2017 it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The song lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds and incorporates storytelling, humour, satire, and social commentary wrapped around a simple Piedmont style guitar accompaniment. Due to Guthrie's rambling style, it has often been described as a shaggy dog story. He himself refers to the incident as a massacree, a colloquialism originating in the Ozark Mountains that describes an event so wildly and improbably and baroqueally messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe. It is a corruption of the word massacre, but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation rather than describing anything involving actual death. The story behind the song begins on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. Harlow and a friend decide to clean up after a party at the home of Alice Brock, the owner of the restaurant that the song takes its name from. The two men load up their Volkswagen microbus with their friends' garbage and head off to the local dump. Sadly, the friends didn't think it through, and as it was Thanksgiving and therefore a bank holiday, the dump was closed. What were they to do? Take the rubbish back to the restaurant and wait until the next day like good honourable citizens or find somewhere to dump it. Sadly, as they were heading back to their friend's house, they came across another pile of rubbish that had been dumped earlier and decided to add their own before returning to the Thanksgiving party. The following day, the local chief of police, Officer Obi, phoned Alice Brooke to say they had found an envelope addressed to her among the offending pile of rubbish and he wanted to interview her in relation to the dumping incident. Not wanting his friend to be unfairly accused and thinking that he would be given a reprimand and made to clear up the rubbish, Guthrie put his hands up and confessed to dumping the garbage. However, he and his friends were arrested, handcuffed and taken to the scene of the crime, where police officers collected forensic evidence of the rubbish and took a total of 27 photos as evidence of the wrongdoing. The two men stood trial the next day. When Obi saw the judge relied upon a side support dog, he realised that the officer's meticulous work had been filed by a literal case of American blind justice, as the judge would not be able to see the evidence. Guthrie and his friend were fined $50, equivalent to about $510 in 2026, and were ordered to pick up the garbage. This is where the story takes a remarkable turn. A few years later, Arlow was called to appear for a physical examination at the Army Building on Whitehall Street in New York, relating to the Vietnam war draft. Despite trying various strategies to be found unfit for military service, they all failed and it looked like he was bound for Saigon. However, after a number of hours, he was asked if he had ever been convicted of a crime and whether he had rehabilitated himself. Guthrie commented about the irony of having to prove himself reformed from a crime of littering when the realities of war were often far more brutal. The officer in charge of the induction process took offence at Guthrie's comment, stated that the good people of the United States didn't like his kind and declared that he was morally unfit for military service. The song became an anthem of the late 1960s counterculture movement because it challenged authority through humour rather than confrontation, and every Thanksgiving day in America, radio stations still play the entire 18-minute recording. The beauty of Alice's restaurant is that it reminds us that storytelling has always been a powerful part of American Roots music. Whether it's a blues singer recounting hard times, a folk singer spinning a tail, or a country musician sharing a slice of life, the story is often just as important as the melody. Now, before we leave Arlo Guthrie in Alice's restaurant, it's worth remembering that the song emerged during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American history. The Vietnam War cast a long shadow across the 1960s and early 70s, and musicians often found themselves giving voice to the questions, frustrations, and concerns of an entire generation. What made Arlo's approach so distinctive was that he used humour and storytelling, but not every songwriter chose that path. One artist who took a much more direct approach was Phil Hox. Hox was one of the great protest singers of the folk era, and perhaps no song captures his message more clearly than I Ain't Marching Anymore, which was released in 1965. Where Arla Gothri invites us to laugh at the absurdities of the system, Phil Hox confronts it head on. The song is written from the perspective of a soldier who has grown weary of fighting wars on behalf of politicians and governments. It's powerful, uncompromising, and deeply moving. Listening to it today, you can still feel the frustration and exhaustion of a generation asking difficult questions about war and its human cost. Then, a few years later, in 1969, another song would become closely associated with the Vietnam era, Fortunate Sun by Credence Clearwater Revival. Now, unlike Alice's restaurant, this isn't an 18-minute story. It's short, sharp, and delivered with all the force of a punch to the jaw. The song takes aim at privilege and inequality, particularly the perception that the sons of wealthy and influential families often seemed able to avoid the burdens that ordinary young Americans were expected to carry. It's a song driven by anger, energy, and a sense of injustice. Whether it's Arlo Guthrie spinning an 18-minute tale, Phil Ox challenging the conscience of a nation, or Creden's clear water revival distilling frustration into three unforgettable minutes, each reminds us that some of the most powerful stories ever told don't come from books or films, they come from songs. Before we move on to our next artists, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, I think this would be a good time to listen to a piece of music. For this episode, I've gone with the anti-war protest vibe and have chosen Good World Gone Bad by Chester Malone. He loved rally cars, football, beer, and music. He would regularly travel to Mid Wales over a weekend and come back on a Monday morning with tales of having to dive out of the way of souped-up Ford Escorts and Mini Coopers. He played football at a very high level, well into his late 30s, and although he was a Manchester United supporter, we quickly became good friends. I hadn't been working for him for very long when he asked me if I wanted to go to Old Trafford to watch United in what I think was one of the early rounds of the FA Cup. We stood in the old Stretford End, had a great time, and I think United won 3-0. On the way back, we stopped off for a drink and started talking about a mutual interest of ours, music. He'd been to Mothers in Erdington and seen bands like The Nice, Family, King Crimson, Free, Steppenwolf, and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. It was during this conversation that I also found out about his love for blues music, especially Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. I'd never heard of either of them, but swore to myself to find out more. If Brian liked them, they must be okay. I subsequently found out that they were one of the most influential blues duos of the 20th century, helping to carry rural southern blues into the urban folk and revival scenes of the mid-1900s. Terry's explosive whooping harmonica style, rooted in Piedmont's and country blues traditions, paired with McGee's smooth rhythmic guitar work and expressive vocals, created a sound that was both deeply traditional and highly accessible to new audiences. Together, they became central figures in the post-war blues revival, especially during the 1950s to 70s folk boom in the United States and the United Kingdom, where they played a major role in introducing blues music to wider, often younger audiences. Their long partnership not only preserved older blues forms, but also influenced generations of folk rock and blues musicians who followed, making them key bridges between early African American blues traditions and modern popular music. But before that became a famous partnership, Heat had already lived a remarkable life. Let's start with Sonny Terry. Born Saunders Terrell in North Carolina in 1911. His interest in music began early on when his father taught him to play harmonica. Sadly, by the time he was 16, he was completely blind. It has been reported that he lost his sight following two separate traumatic accidents. However, the most widely accepted account is that his blindness developed in childhood due to repeated trauma in a time and place where medical treatment was extremely limited, and by the time he reached his mid-teens, the damage had progressed so much that he lost his sight completely. As he was no longer able to do farm work, street performance and music became the only way he could make a living, and he quickly developed a highly expressive vocal approach to the harmonica rather than a purely technical one. One of the most distinctive features of his playing is the way he turned the harmonica into a kind of human voice substitute, using sharp bursts, bends, shout swoops, and rhythmic breathing patterns to mimic emotional speech, train whistles, animals, and work calls from rural life. This wasn't just showmanship, it reflected how he experienced sound as his primary way of navigating and interpreting the world around him. His blindness also influenced his performances style, with audiences becoming well known for his physical energy on stage, stomping, moving and vocalizing while playing. That created a strong sense of connection with listeners, especially in live folk and blues settings where his sound felt immediate and storytelling driven. Then there was Brownie McGee. Brownie McGee was born Walter Brown McGee on the 30th of November 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up mainly in Kingsport in the same county. His early life was shaped by both music and physical hardship. As a young child, he contracted polio, which left him with a weakened leg and meant he often had to use a crutch or a cane. This limited his ability to play outside like other children, but it also pushed him strongly towards music from a very early age. Music was already part of his family life. His father, George Duff McGee, was a guitarist and singer who played at local dances and social gatherings, and was one of McGee's earliest influences and taught him basic guitar and piano. His mother is less documented in surviving records, but the household itself is consistently described as one where music was normal everyday life. He had several siblings, but the most important in musical history was his younger brother Granville, who was born in 1918. Granville became a musician too and was nicknamed Stick McGee because, as a child, he would push Brownie around in a small cart using a stick. Stick McGee later had his own successful career as a jump blues and RB performer, best known for the song Drinking Wine Spoti O'Do E. Brownie began picking up instruments from a very young age, first banjo and piano, then giving He also sang in church choirs and gospel groups, and as a teenager, he was already performing locally in Tennessee. As he grew older, McGee left school and began traveling around the American South, working in carnivals, medicine shows, and minstrel circuits, which were common routes for young black musicians at the time, to gain experience and earn a living. He developed a distinctive finger-picking guitar style, influenced by the Piedmont Blues tradition, where rhythm and melody are played simultaneously rather than strummed. By his late teens and his early twenties, he was already a working professional musician, moving between towns in Tennessee and North Carolina, and eventually heading towards larger music scenes like Chicago and New York. The Piedmont finger picking style that Terry played was shaped by his hero, Blind by Fuller, and it was Fuller who unknowingly brought Terry and McGee together. In Durham, North Carolina in 1939, Sonny was playing harp for Fuller and Brownie was performing nearby. They crossed paths, recognised something in each other, and after Fuller's death in 1941, they recorded together for the first time. A tribute called The Death of Blind Boy Fuller. From there, the road opened up, they busted on New York streets, played left-wing rallies with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and slowly built a reputation as the most beloved blues duo of their era. Their Piedmont style, light, rhythmic and intricate, was a world away from the Delta's heavy stump. It was front porch music, travelling man music, music that rolled like a train instead of grinding like a play. But their partnership wasn't simple. They split up briefly in the 1940s when Sonny joined the Broadway cast of Finion's Rainbow, and Brownie went off to front an RB combo. Yes, by 1955 they were back together again, this time in Cat on a hot tin roof, and from there they toured almost non-stop for more than 20 years. Colleges, coffee houses, folk festivals, nightclubs, Europe, everywhere. On stage they were magic, Sonny's explosive harmonica and whoops cutting through Brownie's warm, steady guitar. Off stage, they were famously prickly with each other, a partnership of deep musical chemistry, and equally deep personal tension. But that tension never touched the music. The music was always bigger. By the time the folk revival hit in the 1960s, they were already legends. They recorded dozens of albums, appeared in films and Broadway shows, and helped carry the blues into a new generation. Their influence runs through every acoustic blues revivalist who came after, and through anyone who's ever tried to make a harmonica talk. I think this is a good time for our second piece of music. This is Catching Every Breeze by Will Harrison. Their partnership lasted for more than four decades and helped introduce Piedmont Blues to audiences far beyond the American South. During the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, they became some of the most recognizable ambassadors of traditional blues music, appearing at festivals, concerts, and on television. Arla Guthrie, on the other hand, is still with us today. Now in his late 70s, he remains one of the great custodians of America's folk tradition, carrying forward the storytelling spirit that he inherited from his father. In recent years, Guthrie has largely stepped back from touring. In 2020, he announced that he was retiring from the road due to health issues related to strokes he had suffered. Although he has continued to make occasional public appearances and remains involved in preserving his family's musical legacy. Along with the rolling rhythms and masterful musicianship of Piedmont Blues legends, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. I'm off to lunch now with Tim and Brian, so that we can share some more stories. So, until the next time on Rod's Ramblings. Cheers and take care.