Dude! I knew there was a reason I kept you around.
I loved those guys. The first two times I saw them in Seattle, I was in wanna be blues player heaven. The third time (1980), they'd gotten like an old married couple that fights all the time. It was tough to see, and just amazing, as they didn't seem to realize or care that they were only the greatest black blues duo ever and musical standouts regardless of genre. And they were walking away from it. All of this is widely known to anyone who followed them in that period - Brownie had a trombone fixed up with a kazoo on one end (?!?) so he could play his own breaks. Sonny had a bass player in tow so he could have some accompaniment.
I guess I didn't need to go all negative and $h!t, these vids. are great for me in part cause I can see or be reminded rather that they did have some great years. Many great years in fact.
Sonny played in 'Finian's Rainbow' on Broadway for two years. Later - mid 50s - the two of them were in the cast of 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' for 3 years on Broadway.
Sonny tells a great story about Finian's Rainbow, I heard it on video years ago. They needed a blind, black harmonica player for the play, this in 1947 and a guy told the director that Sonny Terry was who they wanted. So he comes in, plays a tune and the director says "Sonny, that's perfect, we need you to play it the same way every night for three minutes."
Sonny goes on "well it don't always come out the same way, some time it come out like this, some time it come out like that, it all depend on how I feel. But the director says 'we have to have it the same way.' So we go back forth like that and along about then I ask him how much it pay, and he says $300 a week. I like to faint. But I catch my breath real quick and say "oh HELL YES! I'll play it the same way EVERY NIGHT!"
I just checked an inflation calculator, $300 in '47 would be $2977 today.
Dang.
