Blind Blues Singer Sonny Terry Dies

Sonny Terry, a blind vocalist and harmonica player who sang the blues from medicine shows to Carnegie Hall, figuring prominently in the folk music revival of the 1940s and ‘50s, has died at age 74.

Terry, whose given name was Saunders Terrill, died Tuesday of unannounced causes.

He was born in Greensboro, Ga., on Oct. 24, 1911. Blinded by accidents in his youth, he used to take down his father’s harmonica during the day when the elder Terrill was farming and soon learned to imitate the sounds of trains and animals before going on to the blues.

He was touring with medicine shows by the time he was 19 and later played in the streets of Durham, N.C., with two blind guitarists, Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller.

He began his 50-year association with Brownie McGhee, a guitarist and singer, in 1939. They specialized in the so-called “Piedmont Blues,” an intricate, delicately melodic blues style based on McGhee’s fluid finger-picking guitar.

On his own, Terry made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall in 1939.

Terry cut his first records for Folkways during World War II, and remained a prolific recording artist for the rest of his career. He appeared on Broadway in “Finian’s Rainbow” where his “Hootin’ Blues” became one of the highlights of the musical and with McGhee in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Terry recently appeared in and provided some of the sound-track music for “The Color Purple.”