Granville Henry "Stick" McGhee (March 23, 1918 – August 15, 1961) was an American
jump blues
Jump blues is an up-tempo style of blues, usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues was renewed in the 1990s as ...
guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known for his
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
song "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee", which he wrote with
J. Mayo Williams
Jay Mayo "Ink" Williams (September 25, 1894 – January 2, 1980) was a pioneering African-American producer of recorded blues music. Some historians have claimed that Ink Williams earned his nickname by his ability to get the signatures of t ...
Note: According to research presented by Jim Dawson and Steve Propes (''What Was the First Rock 'N' Roll Record,'' (1992). Boston: Faber and Faber, p. 49. ), Williams did not co-author the song, but merely purchased half the rights to it for $10, in 1947.
Kingsport, Tennessee
Kingsport is a city in Sullivan and Hawkins counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, its population was 55,442. Lying along the Holston River, Kingsport is commonly included in what is known as the Mountain Empire, w ...
. He received his nickname when he was a child. He used a stick to push a wagon carrying his older brother Brownie McGhee, who had contracted polio.Toshes, Nick (1999). ''Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll: The Birth of Rock in the Wild Years before Elvis.'' New York: Da Capo Press. Granville began playing the guitar when he was thirteen years old. After his freshman year he dropped out of high school and worked with his father at the
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
subsidiary, Tennessee Eastman Company in Kingsport. In 1940, Granville quit his job and moved to
Portsmouth, Virginia
Portsmouth is an independent city in southeast Virginia and across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. As of the 2020 census, the population was 97,915. It is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area.
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Naval M ...
, and then to New York City. He entered the military in 1942 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After being discharged in 1946, he settled in New York.
Entertainment career
In the military, McGhee often played his guitar. One of the songs he performed was "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee". The original lyrics of the song were as follows:
Drinkin’ that mess is our delight,
And when we get drunk, start fightin’ all night.
Knockin’ out windows and tearin’ down doors,
Drinkin’ half-gallons and callin’ for more.
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Pass that bottle to me!"
Wynonie Harris
Wynonie Harris (August 24, 1915 – June 14, 1969) was an American blues shouter and rhythm-and-blues singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. He had fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Harris is attributed by ma ...
,
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles M ...
spodi
The term punch refers to a wide assortment of drinks, both non-alcoholic and alcoholic, generally containing fruits or fruit juice. The drink was introduced from the Indian subcontinent to England by employees of the East India Company in th ...
. In 1946 Granville and Brownie McGhee wrote a version of the song that didn't use profanity. Harlem Records released the new version in January 1947. It sold for 49 cents. It did not get much airplay until two years later, when Stick re-created the song for
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...
. It was on the ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
chart
A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...
for almost half a year, rising to number 2, where it stayed for four weeks.
Numerous cover versions of his songs were recorded over the years. The first cover was by
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles M ...
Wynonie Harris
Wynonie Harris (August 24, 1915 – June 14, 1969) was an American blues shouter and rhythm-and-blues singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. He had fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Harris is attributed by ma ...
, followed by a hillbilly-bop version by Loy Gordon & His Pleasant Valley Boys. "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee" continued to be popular throughout the 1950s in cover versions by various artists, including
Malcolm Yelvington
Malcolm Yelvington (September 14, 1918 – February 21, 2001) was an American rockabilly and country musician. Born in Covington, Tennessee, he released a record on Sun Records in 1954, just after Elvis Presley.
Yelvington began performing in loc ...
in 1954, Johnny Burnette in 1957, and Jerry Lee Lewis in 1959.
McGhee continued to make records for Atlantic and created popular songs such as "Tennessee Waltz Blues", "Drank Up All the Wine Last Night", "Venus Blues", "Let's Do It", and " One Monkey Don't Stop No Show", but his music career overall was not successful. McGhee moved from Atlantic to Essex Records, for which he recorded "My Little Rose". The
record
A record, recording or records may refer to:
An item or collection of data Computing
* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, ...
was not commercially successful, so he moved to King Records in 1953. There he recorded a number of rock-and-roll songs, such a "Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice", "Head Happy with Wine", "Jungle Juice", "Six to Eight", "Double Crossin' Liquor", "Dealin' from the Bottom", and "Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter". However, he was unable to make money from his records, so he left King for
Savoy Records
Savoy Records is an American record company and label established by Herman Lubinsky in 1942 in Newark, New Jersey. Savoy specialized in jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel music.
In September 2017, Savoy was acquired by Concord Bicycle Music.
...
in 1955. He retired from the
music industry
The music industry consists of the individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, ...
in 1960. In the late '50s McGhee recorded LP album tracks with Sonny Terry for the Folkways and Prestige-Bluesville labels. In 1960 he cut the songs "Sleep in Job" and "Money Fever" in New York with Sonny Terry. The tracks were released on Herald Records. This was McGhee's last recording session. He became ill shortly afterward and died in August 1961.
Death
McGhee died of lung cancer in The Bronx, New York, on August 15, 1961, at the age of forty-three. He left his old guitar to Brownie's son before he died.
Discography
With
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and oc ...
*''
Sonny's Story
''Sonny's Story'' is an album by blues musician Sonny Terry recorded in 1960 and released on the Bluesville label.List of people from Tennessee
The following is a list of prominent people who were born in the U.S. state of Tennessee, live (or lived) in Tennessee, or for whom Tennessee is significant part of their identity:
A
* Roy Acuff (1903–1992), musician; born in Maynard ...