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Saunders Terrell, AKA Sonny Terry, was another blues musician pushed into the business by blindness. He lost his sight at the age of 16 and could no longer work on his father’s farm. Brownie McGee suffered from the aftereffects of polio and was also unable to do manual labor. The two met in North Carolina, in 1939, introduced by guitarist Blind Boy Fuller, and by 1942 the two were performing together in New York. Terry and McGee did folk coffeehouse and festival gigs as an acoustic duo while, in the 1940s, also fronting a jump blues band with saxophone and drums. Their collaboration lasted into the 1980s.

Here is a 1966 performance which features Sonny Terry, singing and playing harmonica. Brownie McGee accompanies him on guitar, mostly off camera.

Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker, a Canadian folksinging duo, come down from Canada in 1962 and, in New York, became protégés of Albert Gossman, business manager to the stars of the great American folk scare. Grossman got them a record deal with Vanguard and a spot at the Newport Folk Festival and the rest is history. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1974.

Both Ian and Sylvia continue to perform (separately.) Ian, now 69 years old, looks a bit like Al Gore in a cowboy hat but still gives a very good show. I havn’t had the priveledge of seing Sylvia perform live.

In this clip, from a Hootenanny episode in 1963, they sing their version of Ma Rainy’s “C C Rider”, from their first, self titled album.

Known as “Big” Walter in contrast to “Little” Walter Jacobs and also as “Shakey” because oh his characteristic head movement while playing, Walter Horton, born in 1917, was a pioneer blues harmonica player. He began playing harmonica at the age of 5 in his hometown, Horn Lake, Mississippi. As a young teen, Horton started his professional music career in Memphis Tennessee, in the late 1920s. He claimed to have appeared on some records with the Memphis Jug Band at this time, although this has been disputed. He did record with guitarist Little Buddy Doyle for Okeh and Vocalion Records records in the 1930s. Horton spent several years out of the music business in the 1940 but was back and recording for Sam Phillips’ Sun records by the early 1950s. Horton was a part of the Chicago blues scene in the 1960s working with Johnny Shines, Eddie Taylor, Johnny Young, Sunnyland Slim and Willie Dixon.

Here he makes a television appearance in 1965. The set is a gritty urban street scene, appropriate to his position as a “Chicago blues man.” He is playing an instrumental piece entitled “Shakey’s Blues.”