Brownie McGhee Quotations

There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away.

Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat.

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

My guitar was loud as hell, and I had no sympathy for anybody else.

When I was hitch-hiking, people had to follow me, 'cause I didn't stay long.

I don't sit here and dream because I don't care about the future. I wouldn't take nothin' for my past and I've got enough behind me that I can write forever.

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.

Anywhere I'm wanted, I'll go. I've got to be wanted, though.

I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.

I only write about what I do, what happens to me.

I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed.

That's what I liked about hitch-hiking. If a crowd wasn't big enough, I kept walkin.'

When somebody blazes a path to a highway that never end, you should appreciate 'em some.

Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them.

From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto.

Long made it possible for me to get on records, so what little money he did take from me, if any at all, he was entitled to it. He didn't take something from me.

I never had the blues; the blues always had me.

The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude.

Blues is not a dream, blues is truth.

I didn't make too many records with Leadbelly. The truth about it, Lead had his 12-string guitar, and I was playin' a steel National.

I started a guitar school. It was called Home of the Blues, on 125th Street in New York. I did that for five, six years and had a lot of students.