Live at the New Penelope Café (Remaster) Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

• 1Hooray Hooray (These Women is Killing Me) [Remastered]02:39
• 2Cornbread, Peas and Black Molasses (Remastered)04:24
• 3Pack It Up and Go (Remastered)02:40
• 4Sportin' Life (Remastered)04:56
• 5Come on If You're Coming (Remastered)05:40
• 6Born with the Blues (Remastered)04:41
• 7Easy Rider (Remastered)03:16
• 8Hootin' the Blues (Remastered)03:53
• 9Under Your Hood (Remastered)04:27
• Total Runtime36:36

Info for Live at the New Penelope Café (Remaster)

Pioneering folk-blues duo of the 19602 blue revival! Available for the first time on vinyl, “Live At The New Penelope Café”, recorded in Montreal in 1967, showcases the famous blues duo in unusually lively form. It’s possible that the duo weren't even thinking about the fact that they were being recorded which resulted in a less stiff and formal performance than they could sometimes deliver when playing in front of collegiate audiences.

The result is a record a bit louder and noisier, but also more exciting than most of their other live albums -- the voices mesh together a bit rougher and more honestly than they do on some of their other live releases. The sound is clean mono, with the audience present but not overly obtrusive.

„It sometimes seems like there are about 90 live albums by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, all from the 1960s. This one, taped at a show in Montreal in 1967, stands out from the rest because the duo are in unusually lively form, and its having been recorded in a more raw than usual manner. As with other releases in this Canadian-taped series by Michael Nerenberg, it's possible that the duo weren't even thinking about the fact that they were being recorded, and so were less stiff and formal than they could sometimes sound playing in front of white collegiate audiences. The result is a record a bit louder and noisier, but also more exciting than most of their other live albums -- the voices mesh together a bit rougher and more honestly than they do on some of their other live releases. The sound is clean mono, with the audience present but not overly obtrusive, and the repertory includes 'Cornbread, Peas and Black Molasses,' 'Sportin' Life,' 'Easy Rider,' 'Pack It Up and Go,' 'Hooray Hooray (These Women Is Killing Me),' Champion Jack Dupree's 'Under Your Hood,' and a medley of stuff like the Broonzy/Segar 'Key to the Highway' and Leroy Carr's 'In the Evening.' (Bruce Eder, AMG)

Sonny Terry, harmonica, vocals
Brownie McGhee, acoustic guitar, vocals

Digitally remastered

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee
were the most beloved and influential duo in blues history. Saunders Terrell (1911-1986) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Walter Brown McGhee (1915-1996) in Knoxville, Tennessee. Terry was blind, and McGhee walked with a pronounced limp. They met in 1939 while busking in Durham, North Carolina. Terry was playing harmonica for singer-guitarist Blind Boy Fuller, while singer-guitarist McGhee was performing with harmonica player Jordan Webb. They hooked up again in 1941, following Fuller’s death, and made their first record together three years later. They played for tips on New York City streets for a time and appeared at many left-wing rallies and benefits with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, and other folksingers. Terry, whose vocal contributions had been limited to high falsetto hollers ('whopping,” he called it) that punctuated his harmonica riffs, began singing in his natural voice during this period. 'I got tired of giving him half the money when I was doing all the singing,” McGhee recalled.

They parted company in 1947 when Terry joined the cast of Burton Lane and Yip Harburg’s socially-conscious musical Finian’s Rainbow, staying two years. McGhee then formed a rhythm-and-blues combo and became active as a studio musician. Terry and McGhee were reunited in 1955 in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. While with the play in San Francisco in 1957, Terry and McGhee recorded three albums for Fantasy Records. They left the production the following year and toured together 11 months a year for the next 23 years, recording dozens of albums for many labels along their routes. At first they played primarily at colleges and coffeehouses, but by the mid-Sixties they were appearing at folk festivals, concert halls, and showcase nightclubs around the world.

This album contains no booklet.