Josh White
Encyclopedia
Joshua Daniel White better known as Josh White, was an American
singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s.
White grew up in the Jim Crow South
. During the 1920s and 30s, he became a prominent race records artist, with a prolific output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues
, country blues
, gospel
, and social protest
songs. In 1931, White moved to New York, and within a decade his fame had spread widely; his repertoire expanded to include urban blues
, jazz
, traditional
folk songs, and political protest songs. He soon was in demand as an actor on radio, Broadway
, and film.
White also became the closest African-American friend and confidant to president
Franklin D. Roosevelt
. However, White's anti-segregationist
and international human rights
political stance presented in many of his recordings and in his speeches at rallies resulted in the right-wing McCarthyites
assuming him a Communist. Accordingly, from 1947 through the mid 1960s, White became caught up in the anti-Communist Red Scare
, and combined with the resulting attempt to clear his name, his career was damaged. White's playing style influenced many future generations of guitarists, including Blind Boy Fuller
, Brownie McGhee
, Pete Seeger
, Lena Horne
, Nat King Cole
, Harry Belafonte
, Lonnie Donegan
, Eartha Kitt
, Alexis Korner
, Odetta
, Elvis Presley
, The Kingston Trio
, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Merle Travis
, Dave Van Ronk
, Peter, Paul and Mary
, Bob Dylan
, Eric Weissberg
, Judy Collins
, Mike Bloomfield
, Danny Kalb
, Roger McGuinn
, David Crosby
, Richie Havens
, Don McLean
, Roy Harper
, Ry Cooder
, John Fogerty
, Eva Cassidy
and Jack White
.
He was the first black singer to give a White House Command Performance(1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record, "One Meatball" (1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945)., first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally; and along with Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, the first to be honored with a US Postage Stamp.
White and Libby Holman
became the first mixed-race male and female artists to ever perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They would continue performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together.
, United States
. His father told him that he was named after the Biblical character Joshua of the Old Testament
. His mother introduced him to music at five years old, when he began singing in his local church's choir. White's father threw a white bill collector out of his home in 1921, causing him to be beaten so badly that he was very near death, then locked up in an mental institution, where he died nine years later.
Two months after his father had been taken away from the family, Joshua left home with a blind, black street singer named Blind Man Arnold, who he had agreed to lead across the South to collect coins after performances. Arnold would then send White's mother two dollars a week. Arnold soon realized that he could profit from this gifted boy who quickly learned to dance, sing, and play the tambourine
. Over the next eight years, he rented the boy's services out to other blind street singers, including Blind Blake
, and Blind Joe Taggart
, and in time White quickly mastered the varied guitar stylings of all his blind masters. In order to appear sympathetic to the onlookers tossing coins, the old men kept White shoeless and in ragged short pants till he was sixteen years old. At night he would have to sleep in the cotton fields or in the horse stables, often on an empty stomach, while his master slept in a black hotel.
While guiding Taggert in 1927, White arrived in Chicago
, Illinois
. Mayo Williams, a producer
for Paramount Records
, recognized White's talents and began using him as a session guitarist. He backed up many artists for recordings before recording his first popular Paramount recording as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist on "Scandalous and a Shame" and billed as "Blind Joe Taggert & Joshua White," while becoming the youngest artist of the `race records' era. Yet he was still shoeless, sleeping in the horse stable, and with all his recordings payments going to Taggert and Arnold. After Mayo Williams left Paramount to start his own label in Chicago, he threatened Taggert that if he didn't pay White for his recording services he would call the authorities and have him arrested for indentured servitude and keeping the boy out of school. For a few months after Taggert released him from his servitude, White shared a room with Blind Blake at Williams' home before finding his own room in a boarding house. Finally, he was being paid for his recordings, and for the first time in his life able to buy and wear proper clothes and shoes. For the next two years, White continued an active recording schedule in Chicago, until he had saved enough money to return to Greenville and take care of his mother and younger siblings.
Late in 1930, New York's ARC Records sent two A&R
men to find White, the lead boy who had recorded for Paramount in 1928. After several months of searching, they found him, recovering from a compound fracture in his leg at his mother's home in Greenville, SC. For a week, they tried to convince Mrs. White to sign her underage son to a recording contract with ARC. After promising Mrs. White that they would not record the "Devil's Music" (the blues), and only have White record religious songs, she finally agreed to sign a contract for $100.
After his signing, White moved to New York City
, billed as "Joshua White - The Singing Christian". Within a few months, after recording all of his religious repertoire, ARC explained to White that he could make more money if he also recorded the blues repertoire he had learned, in addition to working as a session man for other artists. White, at 18 and still underage, signed a new contract under the name "Pinewood Tom" in 1932, although this was only used on his blues recordings. ARC used his birth name for new gospel recordings, and soon added "The Singing Christian" to the title. ARC also released his recordings under the name Tippy Barton during this period.
As a session guitarist, he recorded with Leroy Carr
and Scrapper Blackwell
, Buddy Moss
, Charlie Spand
, The Carver Boys, Walter Roland
, and Lucille Bogan
.
In February 1936, he punched his left hand through a glass door during a bar fight, and the hand became infected with gangrene
. White was advised by doctors to amputate the hand, and White repeatedly refused. Amputation was averted, but his chording hand was left immobile. Afterwards, he retreated from his recording career to become a dock worker, an elevator operator, and a building superintendent. During the time when his hand was lame, he squeezed a small rubber ball to try and revive it.
One night during a card game, White's left hand was revived completely; and he immediately began practicing his guitar, and soon put together a group called "Josh White & His Carolinians" with his brother Billy and close friends Carrington Lewis, Sam Gary
, and Bayard Rustin
. They soon began playing private parties in Harlem
. At one of these parties, on New Year's Eve 1938, Leonard DePaur, a Broadway choral director, was intrigued by White's singing. For the past six months, DePaur and the producers of the Broadway musical in development, John Henry, had been searching America for an actor/singer/guitarist to play the lead role of Blind Lemon, a street minstrel who would wander back and forth across the stage narrating the story in song. Their initial auditions with native New York singers proved to be unsuccessful, so they looked through previous race record releases to find a suitable artist. They eventually narrowed their search down to two people, "Pinewood Tom" and "The Singing Christian", both used as pseudonyms by White.
, John Henry
opened on Broadway on January 10, 1940, with Paul Robeson
as John Henry and White as Blind Lemon Jefferson
. Although the musical did not have long run, it helped jumpstart his career. Soon thereafter, White began working with Woody Guthrie
, Lead Belly, Burl Ives
, and The Golden Gate Quartet
in a CBS
radio series Back Where I Come From, written by folk song collector Alan Lomax
and directed by Nicholas Ray
. Nicholas Ray would also produce live engagements and recordings for two historic White duos. The first one, co-starring White with Lead Belly, became a six month engagement at New York's Village Vanguard
nightclub, teaming the young and virile city blues singer—the "Joe Louis of the Blues Guitar," with the older, white haired country blues singer—the "King of the 12 String Guitar" (monikers given the blues legends by Woody Guthrie in his Daily Worker
Communist newspaper review of their show). "Josh White & Leadbelly" achieved great publicity, the excitement of sold-out shows, positive reviews, recordings, and film shorts. 45 years after the event, Max Gordon, owner of the Village Vanguard, would write in his book Live At The Village Vanguard, "The greatest conversations ever heard at the Vanguard was the carving out of the guitars between Leadbelly and Josh White." The second Nicholas Ray duo production for White was with the infamous Libby Holman
, white `torch singer' of the 1920s who was branded an immoral woman for allegedly killing her millionaire husband. This duo pairing created more publicity and controversy for White, as they also became the first mixed-race male and female artists to ever perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They would continue performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together. White and Libby frequently requested the War Department to send them overseas during World War II to give USO concert performances for the troops. However, despite a Letter of Recommendation from Eleanor Roosevelt, they were constantly rejected as "too controversial", considering that the U.S. Armed Forces were still segregated throughout World War II. Meanwhile, White's album Harlem Blues: Josh White Trio (with Sidney Bechet
and Wilson Myers, on Blue Note Records
) produced the hit single "Careless Love
", while his highly controversial Columbia Records
album Joshua White & His Carolinians: CHAIN GANG, produced by John H. Hammond
, was the first race record ever forced upon the white radio stations and record stores in America's South and caused such a furor that it reached the desk of President Franklin Roosevelt. On December 20, 1940, White and the Golden Gate Quartet, sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, made a historic Washington, D.C. concert at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium to Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery (the live recording of this concert was recently released on CD in 2005). One month later, White and The Golden Gate Quartet would perform at President Roosevelt's Inauguration in Washington. White refashioned his music, performance and image with his re-emergence on the entertainment scene in 1939 and 1940. The industry and audiences alike no longer saw a young southern black country boy, but instead a mature, self-educated, articulate, outspoken yet sophisticated 26-year-old man, who possessed a strikingly handsome and sexual bearing and personality both on and off the stage. He soon became the first blues performer to attract a large white
and middle-class
African American
following, and was the first African American artist to perform in previously segregated
venues in America, as he transcended the typical racial and social barriers of the time who associated blues with a rural and working-class African American audience, while performing in nightclubs and theaters during the 1930s and 1940s.?’
Throughout the 1940s, as a major matinee idol with magnetic sexual charisma and a commanding stage presence, White not only was an international star of recordings, concerts, nightclubs, radio, film, and Broadway, he also achieved a unique position for an African American of the segregated era by becoming accepted and befriended by white society, aristocracy, European royalty, and America's ruling family, The Roosevelts. One of his most popular recordings during the 1940s was "One Meatball," lyrics a song about a little old man who could afford only one meatball. The song is an adaptation by the American songwriters Hy Zaret
and Lou Singer of a song called "Lay of the One Fishball" lyricshttp://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=354 by Harvard Professor George Martin Lane
, which was to the tune of an English folk song called "Sucking Cider Through a Straw" lyrics. When offered the song he immediately recorded it and it became the first million-selling record by an African American male artist; according to his biographer, Elijah Wald
, it was "Josh's biggest hit by far". The Andrews Sisters and Jimmy Savo
soon recorded their own versions, which also became hits (other cover versions were recorded in subsequent years by Bing Crosby
, Lightnin' Hopkins
, Lonnie Donegan
, Dave Van Ronk
, Ry Cooder
, Washboard jungle, Tom Paxton
, and Shinehead
).
White's hits during the 1940s include "Jelly, Jelly" (a tune with very sexual lyrics, composed by Earl Hines
and Billy Eckstine
); "The House I Live In (What Is America To Me)", a major patriotic American song during World War II, written by Earl Robinson
and Lewis Allan (the lyrics discuss what White hoped America would become after the war and government-sanctioned segregation would end; White had the first hit record with the song, then taught it to Frank Sinatra
for his MGM film short about the song
which won an Academy Award); "Waltzing Matilda
" (an Australian sailor taught this Australian folk song to White backstage at the Cafe Society; White re-arranged the song into a waltz tempo, then donated his services to the government by recording it the next week for the government's "V Disc" label to boost the moral of the troops overseas, and it became an immediate hit); "St. James Infirmary
" (new words and music by White); the old English folk song, "Lass With the Delicate Air"; "John Henry" (new words and music by White), "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
" (new words and music by White), "The Riddle Song (I Gave My Love a Cherry)" (an old English traditional folk song), "Evil Hearted Man" (words and music by White), "Miss Otis Regrets" (by Cole Porter
), "The House of the Rising Sun
" (new words and music by White; recorded subsequently by Woody Guthrie
, Leadbelly
, Dave Van Ronk
, Bob Dylan
, and in 1964 in a rock beat by The Animals
), and "Strange Fruit
.
White recorded in a wide variety of contexts, from recordings in which he was accompanied only by his own guitar playing, to others in which he was backed by guitar and string bass or piano, or jazz ensembles, gospel vocal groups, or even a big swing jazz band, as was the case with his popular 1945 recording, "I Left A Good Deal in Mobile". He also performed and recorded with the great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams
, and besides his duets with Libby Holman and with Leadbelly, he recorded and performed duets with Buddy Moss
, and performed often in duets with his friend Billie Holiday
. He also recorded songs of social and political protest with Woody Guthrie
, Pete Seeger
, Burl Ives
, and Lee Hays in their folk cooperative group the Almanac Singers
and in the later group People's Songs which consisted of the core of musicians and activists who formed Almanac Singers
.
In 1945, with the immense success of his hit single "One Meatball", in addition to his national radio show, his appearance in the film Crimson Canary, and all the publicity emanating from the Cafe Society, White became the first African-American popular music artist to make a national concert hall tour of America, with the Jamaican singer/dancer Josephine Premice as his opening act. Other African-American concert tours to follow included Ethel Waters
, Willie Bryant
, Timmie Rogers
, The Katherine Dunham Company
, The Hall Johnson
Choir, Mary Lou Williams
, Lillian Fitzgerald, The Chocolateers, and The Three Poms. The success of this tour created a demand for a return tour of America's concert halls the following year. On this second tour, White brought the innovative dancer/choreographer Pearl Primus
, who had worked with him at the Cafe Society, as his opening act. Primus had choreographed several performance pieces to the music of White, and on this tour they would perform these numbers together. For the remainder of Pearl Primus's career, she would perform these pieces created with White as a major part of her concert program.
As an actor between the years of 1939 and 1950, White would appear in dozens of radio dramas, including the classic Norman Corwin
plays, and star or co-star on the New York stage in three musicals and three dramatic plays, in addition to appearing in several films. In February, 1945, Paramount Pictures in Hollywood optioned John Lomax
’s projected autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, with Bing Crosby
to star as Lomax and White as Lead Belly. Lead Belly stayed in California until the end of the year, hoping to be involved in the project, but the film never got past the pre-production stage. However, White would appear in other films, including: The Crimson Canary (1945), in which he portrayed himself; the Hans Richter
film Dreams That Money Can Buy
(1947), co-starring with Libby Holman, which won the Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival
and was a major contributor to the "avant-garde" film movement; and the John Sturges
film The Walking Hills (1949), in which he co-starred with Randolph Scott
, John Ireland
, Ella Raines
, and Arthur Kennedy
, in one of Hollywood's
first films where an African American was portrayed as a racially equal character in the story.
As a leading artist/activist of the era, who had begun writing and recording political protest songs as early as 1933, and who would speak and sing at human rights rallies, White was prominently associated with the U.S. civil rights movement
of the 1940s. This activism made White's politics suspect in Hollywood during the McCarthy era, and accordingly, The Walking Hills would be his final film role.
nightclub. Located in New York's Greenwich Village, the Cafe Society was the first integrated nightclub in the United States, where blacks and whites could sit, socialize and dance in the same room and enjoy entertainment. It opened in late 1938 with a three-month engagement of Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, Billie Holiday
and comedian Jack Gilford
, immediately making it New York's hottest club.
One day, John Hammond asked White to meet Barney Josephson
, the owner of the club. As soon as Josephson heard White and saw the charisma he exuded, he told Hammond that White was going to become the first black male sex symbol
in America. It was Josephson who decided at that first encounter, on the stage apparel he would have designed for White - that would become a trademark for years to come - a black velvet shirt open to the stomach and silk slacks. While starring at the Cafe Society over the next decade and becoming exposed to audiences, performers and beautiful music from around the world, White expanded his musical interests and repertoire to include a variety of styles which he would then subsequently record. He had remarkable success in popularizing recordings with a diverse group of musical genres, which ranged from his original repertoire of the Negro blues, gospel and protest songs, to Broadway show tunes, cabaret, pop, and white American, English and Australian folk songs.
The Greenwich Village club was so successful that Josephson soon opened a larger Cafe Society Uptown, at which White also performed, gaining him recognition by the New York Times as the "Darling of Fifth Avenue
". The Roosevelt family, New York society, international royalty, and Hollywood stars regularly came to see White at the Cafe Society, and he used his fame and visibility to create, foster and develop relations between blacks and whites, making him a national figure and voice of racial integration in America.
He was thought to have numerous romantic liaisons with wealthy society women, singers, and Hollywood actresses, but the rumors were never substantiated. The women in question always referred to White as their close friend, and Lena Horne
and Eartha Kitt
also referred to him as a mentor.
The Cafe Society made White a star and put him in a unique position as an African American man. However, because of the club's unique social status of mixing the races, it also became a haven for New York's social progressives whose politics leaned to the Left
. As it played a vital role in White's ascendance to stardom, it would also one day play a crucial role in his fall from grace.
, and would become the closest African American confidant to the President of the United States
; and the Roosevelts were the godparent
s of Josh White, Jr. (born November 30, 1940). In January 1941, White performed at the President's Inauguration, and two months later, he released another highly controversial record album, Southern Exposure, which included six anti-segregationist songs with liner notes written by the celebrated and equally controversial African American writer Richard Wright
, and whose sub-title was "An Album of Jim Crow Blues". Like the Chain Gang album, and with revelatory yet inflammatory songs such as "Uncle Sam Says", "Jim Crown Train", "Bad Housing Blues", Defense Factory Blues", "Southern Exposure", and "Hard Time Blues", it also was forced upon the southern white radio stations and record stores, caused outrage in the South and also was brought to the attention of President Roosevelt. However, instead of making White persona-non-grata in segregated America, it resulted in President Roosevelt asking White to become the first African American artist to give a White House
Command Performance, in 1941. Upon completing that first White House Command Performance, the Roosevelts invited White up to their private chambers, where they spent more than three hours talking about White's life story of growing up in Jim Crow
South, listening to his songs written about those experiences, and drinking Café Royale (coffee and brandy). At one point during that evening, the President said to White, "You know Josh, when I first heard your song `Uncle Sam Says,' I thought you were referring to me as Uncle Sam....Am I right?" White responded, "Yes Mr. President, I wrote that song to you after seeing how my brother was treated in the segregated section of Fort Dix army camp. . . However that wasn't the first song I wrote to you. . . In 1933, I wrote and recorded a song called `Low Cotton,' about the plight of Negro cotton pickers down South, and in the lyrics I made an appeal directly to you to help their situation." The President, interested and impressed at the candor of his response, then asked White to sing those songs to him again. A friendship developed, five more Command Performances would follow, in addition to two appearances at the Inaugurations of 1941 and 1945; and the White family would spend many Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with the Roosevelts at their Hyde Park, New York
mansion
(now the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
). The President sent White to give concerts overseas as a "Goodwill Ambassador" and he was often referred to in the press as the "Presidential Minstrel."
More importantly, it was White's songs of social protest, such as "Uncle Sam Says"listen and "Defense Factory Blues,"listen which caused the President to begin exploring how to desegregate
the U.S. Armed Forces
. Meanwhile, White's recordings of "Beloved Comrade" (the President's favorite song), "Freedom Road", "Free and Equal Blues", and "House I Live In (What is America to Me)", were great songs of inspiration to the Roosevelts and the country during World War II
. After the President's death, White's younger brother William White became Eleanor Roosevelt's personal assistant, house manager and chauffeur for the remainder on her life.
In 1949, Fisk University
honored White with an honorary doctorate; and the NBC National Radio series Destination Freedom produced and aired a one-hour dramatized biography on White's life titled "Help The Blind". In 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt (then the United Nations Ambassador in charge of War Relief) and White made a historical speaking and concert tour of the capitals of Europe to lift the spirits of those war-torn countries. The tour built to such proportions that when they arrived in Stockholm
, the presentation had to be moved from the Opera House
to the city's soccer stadium where 50,000 came out in the pouring rain to hear Mrs. Roosevelt speak and White perform. All during this tour, audiences across Europe enthusiastically requested White to sing his famed anti-lynching recording of "Strange Fruit", but on each occasion he would respond, "My mother always told me that when you have problems in your background you don't give those problems to your neighbor.....So, that's a song I will sing back home until I never have to sing it again, but for you, I would now like to sing its sister song, written by the same man ('The House I Live In')."
along with the participation of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Ferdinand Léger. It won an award at that year's Venice Film Festival
. He also appeared in John Sturges' 1949 western The Walking Hills with Randolph Scott, Ella Raines, Edgar Buchanan, and Arthur Kennedy, in which his character, an itinerant musician, was not a stereotype but on an equal footing with the white characters. He was still young and very handsome and it hard not to speculate on what might have been had the blacklist not put an end to his budding movie career.
(who had been sending newsletters to the media since 1947 about White and other artists who they warned as being subversive), had just released and distributed a thick magazine with subversive details regarding 151 artists from the entertainment and media industries who they labeled as Communist Sympathizers. White's name was prominent on this list. There never had been an official blacklist—until now. White immediately went to discuss the situation with Mrs. Roosevelt—to ask her advice and help. With great empathy, she told him that her voice on his behalf would hinder his efforts to clear his name. She explained that if she wasn't the widow of the president they would also be crucifying her. She continued that the Right Wing
press had been calling her a "pinko
", citing her social activism and friendships with non-whites. That night, White called his manager back and alerted her that he would be flying back to America the next day so that he could clear his name. Upon arriving at New York's Idlewild Airport
, the FBI met him, took him into a Customs holding room, began interrogating him, and held him for hours while waiting word from Washington as to whether White, who was born in America, would be deported back to Europe.
For a decade, White had been a leading voice of black America and a voice that reminded America of its social injustices, while also becoming a major pop star and sex symbol from his platform at the Cafe Society. However, when Barney Josephson's brother and attorney Leon, who was also a lawyer for the International Labor Defense (a politically progressive organization), was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) in 1947 and refused to testify, he was sent to prison. The Right Wing media publicity centered on the Cafe Society as a hot bed of Communists. By December of that year, the original downtown club had to close, and by 1949, the uptown club was forced to shut its doors. Virtually every artist who regularly worked at the club had contributed to Left-leaning benefits and was suspected as being a Communist sympathizer. White was not a Communist, and was not active in any political party. However, when he was told that people's human rights were being threatened and asked to participate in a benefit or a rally, he was always willing to lend his voice to the cause. Whether it was the plight of African Americans in the South or oppressed people in Yugoslavia
, it was all the same to him. Since his return from Europe in June, 1950, White had been interrogated every week, and was threatened that his career would be finished and that he would lose his family. Controversially, in a fervent desire to defend his reputation, and challenge his accusers and the blacklist (while under intense pressure from his manager and his family), White told the FBI that he would go to Washington, appear before the HUAC Committee and set the record straight.
With the assistance of his daughter Bunny, White began writing a lengthy letter about his life and his beliefs that he would plan to read as a statement at his HUAC appearance. Before going to Washington, he made trips to visit two trusted friends and have them read his statement - Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson. Bunny accompanied him on his trip up to Hyde Park to visit Mrs. Roosevelt. She recalled the visit in an interview with Josh White Estate Archival biographer Douglas Yeager, "Mrs. Roosevelt told Daddy that he had written a good letter. However, she cautioned him not to go to Washington, explaining that the HUAC Committee would turn his testimony against him if he appeared and they weren't satisfied with his statement." A few days later, White drove up to Paul Robeson's Connecticut
home by himself.
Paul Robeson, a former All-American football player, was a Columbia University
-trained African American attorney fluent in 12 languages, who lived most of the 1920s and 1930s in London, and was very active in world human rights and the movement to decolonize Africa. However, he was best known as an international star of recordings and film, the most celebrated stage Othello
in history, and the highest paid concert performer in the world. He also was the most respected and admired artist/activist throughout the world, with friendships that included the leaders of many countries including the Soviet Union
, where Robeson was considered a cultural and social giant and iconic figure. To the social progressives in America, he was the most respected and important voice of truth and social justice in the world. In 1939, at the onset of World War II in Europe, Paul Robeson and his family returned to America and maintained a residence in Connecticut. Robeson had been White's friend and artistic collaborator for many years and was the godfather to White's daughter Beverly. They did not always agree on everything politically, however White held great respect for Robeson. Years later in a radio interview, White stated that Robeson never once mentioned the Communist Party to him, and in fact advised White not to get too involved with any political party. Paul Robeson supported America's war effort and was considered a patriotic champion of freedom and liberty after his national radio broadcast concert performance and subsequent record album of "Ballad For Americans
." However, when American Negro soldiers returning from the war were still confronted with government sanctioned segregation, racism and even lynchings, it became evident that Robeson was greatly disappointed with the American government. In the post war years, his socialist belief structure seemed better aligned to the Soviet Union, which had been America's ally in the war, but by 1947 had become their bitter enemy. In 1949, America's media and press reported a speech Robeson had made in [Paris], alleging that he said if a war would ever take place between the USSR and America that American Negroes would not fight in America's army (the U.S. media and press version of the speech has since been found to be inaccurate and slanted).
Before going to Washington, White felt he had to meet with Robeson, have him read his statement and tell him of decision to go to Washington. In White's statement which he showed to Robeson, and which would later be read before the HUAC Committee, one paragraph out of the long biographical letter referred to Robeson: "I have great admiration for Mr. Robeson as an actor and a great singer, and if what I read in the papers is true, I feel sad over the help he's been giving to people who despise America. He has a right to his own opinions, but when he, or anybody, pretends to talk for a whole race, he's kidding himself. His statement that the Negroes would not fight for their country, against Soviet Russia or any other enemy, is both wrong and an insult: because I stand ready to fight Russian or any enemy of America." In the biography, Robeson: Lives of the Left, Martin Duberman wrote about the encounter. Apparently White and Robeson went up to the bathroom of Robeson's master bedroom, turned on all the faucets so that the FBI listening devices couldn't hear their conversation, and began discussing White's statement and his upcoming appearance before HUAC. Robeson read the prepared statement, told White that he personally felt it would be wrong to go to Washington and appear before the HUAC Committee. He continued that he would never appear before the Committee, but that this was a decision White would have to make on his own. Reportly, White painfully told him, "I feel like a heel Paul, but they've got me in a vice...I have to go." White was called into the FBI offices dozens of times between 1947 and 1954, but no one is absolutely certain what special vice they had him in - besides threatening to destroy his career and family, as many of the pages found in his FBI files (via the Freedom of Information Act) are still blacked out by the government. It is the belief of White, Jr. and many others however, that the FBI, displeased with White's prowess with white women, used it against him (as they had done with Jack Johnson
years earlier), by threatening him with imprisonment and saying that they would concoct a trumped up charge of violating the Mann Act, "for transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes."
On September 1, 1950, White, appearing without counsel and with only his wife Carol at his side, sat down before the HUAC Committee in Washington, D.C., regarding Communist
influence in the entertainment industry and African American community. He did not give the HUAC Committee names of Communist Party members. At length, he told them of his life story as a child, seeing his father beaten and dragged through the streets of Greenville by white authorities, and having to leave home at the age of seven to lead street singers across America in order to feed his family. He defended his right and responsibility as a folksinger to bring social injustices to the attention of the public through his songs, and then passionately read the chilling lyrics of one of his most famous recordings, the anti-lynching
song "Strange Fruit" (written by Abel Meeropol
) which was then placed into the Congressional Record
. He also included his words about Paul Robeson regarding the alleged statement Robeson had made in Paris.
White would later defend his testimony as a 'friendly witness' (a term applied to those who appeared voluntarily before the HUAC Committee) by claiming that he had a right to defend his name against unjust accusations, that the scope of his testimony was limited, that he did not state anything that was not already known, that he never gave the FBI or the HUAC Committee names of members of the Communist Party, and that he was sincerely opposed to Communism. However, testifying before the committee and speaking out against Paul Robeson angered his large socially progressive fan base, who believed that testifying before the HUAC Committee acknowledged their right to exist. Not being privileged to know the details of his FBI interrogations, many of this group also suspected that he had given the FBI names of Communist Party members, which he had not. The fact that the future career and reputation of baseball legend Jackie Robinson
was not hampered when he appeared before the HUAC Committee one year earlier, while expressing virtually the same words as White had about Robeson's alleged statement in Spain, did not seem to matter to White's detractors. Robinson's fan base did not derive from the political Left as White's had. White's HUAC appearance greatly affected his posthumous reputation in America, causing him to become the only artist of the era to be blacklisted by both the Right and Left. He felt immense pressures from several sides to appear before the HUAC Committee, and based upon his harsh early life experiences learned in Jim Crow South, it was apparent that White believed his only option to protect the lives of his family and career and to survive, was to figuratively "ride the fence post" -- go to Washington, denounce the Communist Party, but not name any names of Communist Party members. In the end, Mrs. Roosevelt had an astute understanding of the political climate in Washington and in America when she warned White that the government would turn his testimony against him. Indeed, this was the case, and White's blacklisting would not be lifted for years.
With work rapidly drying up in America, White relocated to London
for much of 1950 to 1955, where he hosted his own BBC
radio show, My Guitar Is Old As Father Time, resumed his recording career, with new successes such as "On Top of Old Smokey", "Lonesome Road", "I Want You and Need You", "Wanderings", "Molly Malone
" and "I'm Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town", and gave concert tours throughout Europe and beyond. However, back in the United States—the country of his birth—the McCarthy
anti-communist hysteria had already greatly dismembered White's career as early as 1947, when he lost his record contract and his national radio show, and was barred from appearing on other radio shows. His Hollywood blacklisting began in 1948, after completing his final film role in The Walking Hills, and he would not be allowed to appear on U.S. television from 1948 until 1963. Meanwhile, the 1940s politically Left-leaning social progressives who had survived the Red Scare
, had begun reviving the folk music industry in America. They would keep White shut out from their folk festivals, their folk magazines, their emerging record companies, and their media and press for most of the remaining years of his life. However, in 1955, a brave, young owner of a new American record company, Jac Holzman
, who wasn't afraid of the political pressure from the Right or the Left, offered White the opportunity to record again in his home country. He could only offer him $100, but he promised him artistic control and the best recording equipment available. They recorded the Josh White: 25th Anniversary album, which established Elektra Records
and slowly began reviving White's career by finding a young, new audience who made it possible for him to work again in America. Accordingly, his name and reputation in America has only begun to recover in recent years.
White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy invited him to appear on the national CBS Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President." President Kennedy told him how his records had inspired him when that President was a college student in the Roosevelt era.
From the mid-1950s until his death in Manhasset, New York
in 1969 of heart disease
, White primarily performed in concert halls, nightclubs, and folk music venues and festivals around the world, and in 1961 starred in the Josh White Show for the Granada Television
network in the United Kingdom. White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy
invited him to appear on the national CBS
Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President." Later that year he was seen again on national television performing for the masses on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
at the historical March on Washington
. In 1964, White gave a Command Performance for the Prime Minister of Canada, Lester Pearson; and in January 1965 he performed at the Presidential Inauguration of Lyndon Baines Johnson. In his final years, he would make American television appearances on The Merv Griffin Show
, Hugh Hefner
's Playboy's Penthouse
and Hootenanny, among others. Meanwhile, he starred in two Josh White Concert Specials for national Swedish television in 1962 and 1967; starred in the 1965 ITV Network Special Heart Song: Josh White in the United Kingdom (with guest artists Julie Felix
and Alexis Korner
); while also guest starring on Canada's CBC-TV's Let's Sing Out with Oscar Brand in 1967; and making his final television appearance in May, 1969 on the Canadian CBC-TV variety show One More Time.
UK guitarist/entrepreneur Ivor Mairants
worked with White to create The Josh White Guitar Method (Boosey & Hawkes) in 1956. It was an extremely influential book for the fledgling UK blues/folk scene and was the first blues guitar instruction book ever published. UK guitarist John Renbourn
and American guitarist Stefan Grossman
(who was living in the UK at the time) have cited it as a critical influence on their playing.
owned one of these models in his early playing years. On the last page of "Josh White Guitar Method" (printed 1956) there is a photo of this Zenith Josh White signature guitar and some text about it.
The Guild Guitar Company
in the US worked with White on a signature model in 1965.
This fact was confirmed in a tv-program, The History Detectives, by Mark Dronge, whose father, Al, was one of the founders of
Guild Guitars. Mark Dronge took White to the Guild factory in 1965. A guitar made to White's specifications was made and was meant to become a signature guitar for White, but it was never mass produced. Mark Dronge explained that "The scene was starting to change. The Beatles were so influential and all these bands came out and the electric music was getting bigger and the plans for Josh White model just kind of fell by the wayside, unfortunately."
Carol White would vividly recount to White's archival biographer, Douglas Yeager, that in 1963-1964, the engineers of a new guitar company in development, spent several months with their paperwork and drawings on her dining room table, as White and the engineers designed the first round-bodied guitar. Upon completion, the first Ovation Guitar
was called the "Josh White Model".
According to the "Ovation Original Program" White played "The Josh White Model" Ovation guitar at the Hotel America, Hartford, Connecticut, November 14 1966.
In 1965-1967, the Ovation Guitar Company did make a signature guitar for White and that was the first made for an African American. White was the first official Ovation endorser.
The Music Trades Article December 1966:
"Earlier this year, the present double parabolic form was perfected after extensive consultations with professional guitarists including the pioneering guitar folk singer, Josh White."
"Ovation Instruments unveiled their new line of acoustical guitars at a reception and dinner held last month at the Hotel America, Hartford, Conn. In a program which featured demonstrations by White, one of Americas best-known folk singers, and the Balladeers, a new, young, singing group; and remarks by Charles Kaman, president of Kaman Aircraft Corporation, parent company of Ovation Instruments, and Jim D. Gurley, program manager of Ovation Instruments, the features of the Ovation guitar models were presented to 300 representatives of the press and the music industry."
"Josh White, playing Ovation's "Josh White" model - declared to be the first guitar which the famous folk singer has ever endorsed - held the crowd spellbound. His thirty-minute performance brought forth every nuance of the instrument's unique capability to render clear treble and deep resonant bass notes. Closing the show with a family ensemble with his two daughters, Mr. White brought down the house. It was one of the rare occasions when he and his children, though all professionals, have played together as a group. Also featured were the Balladeers, a bright, young singing group from the Connecticut Valley..."
and the progressive heart disease that would plague him over his final eight years. As a lifelong smoker he also had progressive emphysema
, in addition to ulcers, and severe psoriasis in his hands and calcium deficiency
in his body that would cause the skin to peel off of his fingers and leave his fingernails broken and bleeding with every concert. During the last two years of his life, as his heart weakened dramatically, his wife Carol would put him in the hospital for four weeks after he completed each two-week concert tour. Finally, the doctors felt his only survival option was to attempt a new procedure to replace heart valve
s. The surgery failed.
He died on the operating table on September 6, 1969 at the North Shore Hospital
in Manhasset, New York
.
When Associated Press interviewed Harry Belafonte
, upon learning of White's passing, he said, "I can't tell you how sad I am. I spent many, many hours with him in the years of my early development. He had a profound influence on my style. At the time I came along, he was the only popular black folk singer, and through his artistry exposed America to a wealth of material about the life and conditions of black people that had not been sung by any other artist."
, Lee Hays, Oscar Brand
, Ed McCurdy
, Lonnie Donegan
, Alexis Korner
, Cy Coleman
, Elvis Presley
, Merle Travis
, Joel Grey
, Bob Gibson
, Dave Van Ronk
, Phish
, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Shel Silverstein
, John Fahey
, Bob Dylan
, Peter, Paul and Mary
, Judy Collins
, Roger McGuinn
, David Crosby
, Mike Bloomfield
, Danny Kalb
, Ry Cooder
, John Fogerty
, Don McLean
, and Eva Cassidy
; in addition to those African American artists, such as Blind Boy Fuller
, Robert Johnson, Brownie McGhee
, Lena Horne
, Nat King Cole
, Pearl Primus
, Josephine Premice, Eartha Kitt
, Harry Belafonte
, Odetta
, Ray Charles
, Josh White, Jr., Jackie Washington
, the Chambers Brothers, and Richie Havens
, who in the footsteps of White were also able to break considerable barriers that had hampered African American artists in the past.
section of Harlem, New York. White's younger brother Billy (who he moved up from Greenville) and Carol's mother all lived with them in the White household. His father died in a South Carolina mental institution in 1930, the result of beatings at the hands of Greenville deputies a decade earlier. His mother, Daisy Elizabeth, a very stern and religious woman, remained in her hometown of Greenville, South Carolina and lived into her 80s. She came to visit White in New York several times a year and he traveled to see her in South Carolina, but she didn't allow his non-religious recordings in her home. Except for his childhood performances in her Greenville church in the 1920s, she never again saw her son perform, refusing to attend concerts where he sang non-sacred songs. His brother Billy and (future civil rights leader) Bayard Rustin
, Sam Gary
and Carrington Lewis performed and recorded with White in "Josh White & His Carolinians" (from 1939 to 1940) and appeared with him in the Broadway musical John Henry. After World War II
, Billy became Eleanor Roosevelt
's house manager and chauffeur for the remainder of her life.
On occasion in the early 1940s, when the grandmother watched the children, Carol would join White in singing, performing and recording with the folk collaborative group, the Almanac Singers
. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Carol would appear as a guest on Eleanor Roosevelt's television talk show; and in 1982, she was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian Institution's 100th Anniversary Celebration of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Birth in Washington, while her son, Josh White, Jr., performed a musical program of songs his father had presented at one of his White House Command Performances. Josh White, Jr., a successful singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, educator, and social activist for the past 60 years, performed and recorded with his father as a duet from 1944 to 1961, in addition to performing together with him in two Broadway plays (Josh White, Jr. won a 1949 Tony Award
for the play How Long Till Summer). At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, daughters Beverly, Fern, and Judy also performed, recorded and appeared on radio and television with White. In 1964, when new anti-segregationist legislation made it easier for African Americans to purchase real estate in previously all-white neighborhoods, Josh and Carol bought a duplex home in the Rosedale, Queens
section of New York City. While daughter Beverly and her family lived upstairs, the couple lived in the downstairs home. White lived in this semi-suburban lifestyle for the remainder of his life, while wife Carol would continue to live there and work into her 80s, first as a clothing boutique manager, and then as a social worker to elderly people in nursing homes, until her sudden passing in 1998. One week before her fatal heart attack, Carol received final confirmation that the United States Postal Service
would be honoring White in 1998 with his own postage stamp. When shown a mock-up photograph of the stamp by Josh's estate manager, Douglas Yeager, she expressed joy, gratitude and a long-awaited satisfaction—that after all those painful years of social isolation from the McCarthy era, Josh would finally be receiving the recognition he deserved. She felt that she could finally go now in peace. [The above information has been compiled by Josh White Archival biographer and manager of the Estate of Josh White (Sr.), Douglas Yeager].
Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/movies/106560-hugh-hefner-playboy-activist-and-rebel/#ixzz1Mp7zLJQe
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s.
White grew up in the Jim Crow South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. During the 1920s and 30s, he became a prominent race records artist, with a prolific output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues
Piedmont blues refers primarily to a guitar style, the Piedmont fingerstyle, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger,...
, country blues
Country blues
Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...
, gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
, and social protest
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
songs. In 1931, White moved to New York, and within a decade his fame had spread widely; his repertoire expanded to include urban blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, traditional
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
folk songs, and political protest songs. He soon was in demand as an actor on radio, Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, and film.
White also became the closest African-American friend and confidant to president
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
. However, White's anti-segregationist
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
and international human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
political stance presented in many of his recordings and in his speeches at rallies resulted in the right-wing McCarthyites
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
assuming him a Communist. Accordingly, from 1947 through the mid 1960s, White became caught up in the anti-Communist Red Scare
Red Scare
Durrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
, and combined with the resulting attempt to clear his name, his career was damaged. White's playing style influenced many future generations of guitarists, including Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, Brownie McGhee
Brownie McGhee
Walter Brown McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.-Life and career:...
, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
, Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
, Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
, Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...
, Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
, Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...
, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...
, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
, Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Eric Weissberg
Eric Weissberg
Eric Weissberg is an American banjo player, best known for the theme from the movie Deliverance.-Biography:Eric Weissberg went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then the Juilliard School of Music. He joined an early version of the Greenbriar Boys , but left before they made any recordings....
, Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
, Mike Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, Danny Kalb
Danny Kalb
Danny Kalb is an American blues guitarist, and was one of the original members of the 1960s group, Blues Project.-Life and career:...
, Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
, David Crosby
David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
, Richie Havens
Richie Havens
Richard P. "Richie" Havens is an African American folk singer and guitarist. He is best known for his intense, rhythmic guitar style , soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.-Career:Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children...
, Don McLean
Don McLean
Donald "Don" McLean is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".-Musical roots:...
, Roy Harper
Roy Harper
Roy Harper is an English folk / rock singer-songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since the mid 1960s...
, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, John Fogerty
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
, Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996...
and Jack White
Jack White (musician)
Jack White , often credited as Jack White III, is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and occasional actor...
.
Firsts
White was in many senses a trailblazer; popular country bluesman in the early 1930s, responsible for introducing a mass white audience to folk-blues in the 1940s, first black singer-guitarist to star in Hollywood films and on Broadway. On one hand he was famous for his civil rights songs which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts and on the other for his sexy stage persona (a first for a black male artist).He was the first black singer to give a White House Command Performance(1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record, "One Meatball" (1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945)., first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally; and along with Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, the first to be honored with a US Postage Stamp.
White and Libby Holman
Libby Holman
Libby Holman was an American torch singer and stage actress who also achieved notoriety for her complex and unconventional personal life.-Early life:...
became the first mixed-race male and female artists to ever perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They would continue performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together.
Early years
White was one of four children born to Reverend Dennis and Daisy Elizabeth White, on February 2, 1914, in the black section of Greenville, South CarolinaGreenville, South Carolina
-Law and government:The city of Greenville adopted the Council-Manager form of municipal government in 1976.-History:The area was part of the Cherokee Nation's protected grounds after the Treaty of 1763, which ended the French and Indian War. No White man was allowed to enter, though some families...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. His father told him that he was named after the Biblical character Joshua of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
. His mother introduced him to music at five years old, when he began singing in his local church's choir. White's father threw a white bill collector out of his home in 1921, causing him to be beaten so badly that he was very near death, then locked up in an mental institution, where he died nine years later.
Two months after his father had been taken away from the family, Joshua left home with a blind, black street singer named Blind Man Arnold, who he had agreed to lead across the South to collect coins after performances. Arnold would then send White's mother two dollars a week. Arnold soon realized that he could profit from this gifted boy who quickly learned to dance, sing, and play the tambourine
Tambourine
The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
. Over the next eight years, he rented the boy's services out to other blind street singers, including Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
, and Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart was an American blind country blues musician, from the 1920s and 1930s. He was a great influence on folk singer, Josh White, whom he traveled with. According to White, Taggart was a mean-tempered man. He recorded a few duets with Emma Taggart, whom is believed to have been his wife...
, and in time White quickly mastered the varied guitar stylings of all his blind masters. In order to appear sympathetic to the onlookers tossing coins, the old men kept White shoeless and in ragged short pants till he was sixteen years old. At night he would have to sleep in the cotton fields or in the horse stables, often on an empty stomach, while his master slept in a black hotel.
While guiding Taggert in 1927, White arrived in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Mayo Williams, a producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
for Paramount Records
Paramount Records
Paramount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson.-Early years:...
, recognized White's talents and began using him as a session guitarist. He backed up many artists for recordings before recording his first popular Paramount recording as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist on "Scandalous and a Shame" and billed as "Blind Joe Taggert & Joshua White," while becoming the youngest artist of the `race records' era. Yet he was still shoeless, sleeping in the horse stable, and with all his recordings payments going to Taggert and Arnold. After Mayo Williams left Paramount to start his own label in Chicago, he threatened Taggert that if he didn't pay White for his recording services he would call the authorities and have him arrested for indentured servitude and keeping the boy out of school. For a few months after Taggert released him from his servitude, White shared a room with Blind Blake at Williams' home before finding his own room in a boarding house. Finally, he was being paid for his recordings, and for the first time in his life able to buy and wear proper clothes and shoes. For the next two years, White continued an active recording schedule in Chicago, until he had saved enough money to return to Greenville and take care of his mother and younger siblings.
1930s: "The Singing Christian" and "Pinewood Tom"
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
men to find White, the lead boy who had recorded for Paramount in 1928. After several months of searching, they found him, recovering from a compound fracture in his leg at his mother's home in Greenville, SC. For a week, they tried to convince Mrs. White to sign her underage son to a recording contract with ARC. After promising Mrs. White that they would not record the "Devil's Music" (the blues), and only have White record religious songs, she finally agreed to sign a contract for $100.
After his signing, White moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, billed as "Joshua White - The Singing Christian". Within a few months, after recording all of his religious repertoire, ARC explained to White that he could make more money if he also recorded the blues repertoire he had learned, in addition to working as a session man for other artists. White, at 18 and still underage, signed a new contract under the name "Pinewood Tom" in 1932, although this was only used on his blues recordings. ARC used his birth name for new gospel recordings, and soon added "The Singing Christian" to the title. ARC also released his recordings under the name Tippy Barton during this period.
As a session guitarist, he recorded with Leroy Carr
Leroy Carr
Leroy Carr was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist, who developed a laid-back, crooning technique and whose popularity and style influenced such artists as Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. He first became famous for "How Long, How Long Blues" on Vocalion Records in 1928.-Life and...
and Scrapper Blackwell
Scrapper Blackwell
Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell was an American blues guitarist and singer; best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was an acoustic single-note picker in the Chicago blues and Piedmont blues style, with some critics noting...
, Buddy Moss
Buddy Moss
Eugene "Buddy" Moss was, in the estimation of many blues scholars, one of two the most influential East Coast blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935...
, Charlie Spand
Charlie Spand
Charlie Spand was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer, noted for his barrelhouse style. Spand was deemed one of the most influential piano players of the 1920s. Little is known of his life outside of music, and his total recordings comprise only thirty three...
, The Carver Boys, Walter Roland
Walter Roland
Walter Roland was an American blues, boogie-woogie and jazz pianist, guitarist and singer, noted for his association with Lucille Bogan, Josh White and Sonny Scott. Music journalist, Gérard Herzhaft, stated that Roland was "a great piano player.....
, and Lucille Bogan
Lucille Bogan
Lucille Bogan was an American blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson...
.
In February 1936, he punched his left hand through a glass door during a bar fight, and the hand became infected with gangrene
Gangrene
Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...
. White was advised by doctors to amputate the hand, and White repeatedly refused. Amputation was averted, but his chording hand was left immobile. Afterwards, he retreated from his recording career to become a dock worker, an elevator operator, and a building superintendent. During the time when his hand was lame, he squeezed a small rubber ball to try and revive it.
One night during a card game, White's left hand was revived completely; and he immediately began practicing his guitar, and soon put together a group called "Josh White & His Carolinians" with his brother Billy and close friends Carrington Lewis, Sam Gary
Sam Gary
Sam Gary was an African-American blues, spiritual and folk singer, who to the wider public is known for his long-lasting musical co-operation with Josh White....
, and Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
. They soon began playing private parties in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
. At one of these parties, on New Year's Eve 1938, Leonard DePaur, a Broadway choral director, was intrigued by White's singing. For the past six months, DePaur and the producers of the Broadway musical in development, John Henry, had been searching America for an actor/singer/guitarist to play the lead role of Blind Lemon, a street minstrel who would wander back and forth across the stage narrating the story in song. Their initial auditions with native New York singers proved to be unsuccessful, so they looked through previous race record releases to find a suitable artist. They eventually narrowed their search down to two people, "Pinewood Tom" and "The Singing Christian", both used as pseudonyms by White.
1940s: "Josh White and his Guitar"
After months of rehearsals and out-of-town productions in Philadelphia and BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, John Henry
John Henry (musical)
John Henry was a 1940 original Broadway musical based on the 1931 novel John Henry by Roark Bradford. The libretto was written by Bradford, with music composed by Jacques Wolfe....
opened on Broadway on January 10, 1940, with Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
as John Henry and White as Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Lemon Jefferson
"Blind" Lemon Jefferson was an American blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled "Father of the Texas Blues"....
. Although the musical did not have long run, it helped jumpstart his career. Soon thereafter, White began working with Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, Lead Belly, Burl Ives
Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American actor, writer and folk music singer. As an actor, Ives's work included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and motion pictures. Music critic John Rockwell said, "Ives's voice .....
, and The Golden Gate Quartet
The Golden Gate Quartet
The Golden Gate Quartet is an American vocal group. It was formed in 1934 and, with changes in membership, remains active. It is the most successful of all of the African-American gospel music groups who sang in the jubilee quartet style...
in a CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
radio series Back Where I Come From, written by folk song collector Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
and directed by Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
. Nicholas Ray would also produce live engagements and recordings for two historic White duos. The first one, co-starring White with Lead Belly, became a six month engagement at New York's Village Vanguard
Village Vanguard
The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.-History:Over 100 jazz...
nightclub, teaming the young and virile city blues singer—the "Joe Louis of the Blues Guitar," with the older, white haired country blues singer—the "King of the 12 String Guitar" (monikers given the blues legends by Woody Guthrie in his Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
Communist newspaper review of their show). "Josh White & Leadbelly" achieved great publicity, the excitement of sold-out shows, positive reviews, recordings, and film shorts. 45 years after the event, Max Gordon, owner of the Village Vanguard, would write in his book Live At The Village Vanguard, "The greatest conversations ever heard at the Vanguard was the carving out of the guitars between Leadbelly and Josh White." The second Nicholas Ray duo production for White was with the infamous Libby Holman
Libby Holman
Libby Holman was an American torch singer and stage actress who also achieved notoriety for her complex and unconventional personal life.-Early life:...
, white `torch singer' of the 1920s who was branded an immoral woman for allegedly killing her millionaire husband. This duo pairing created more publicity and controversy for White, as they also became the first mixed-race male and female artists to ever perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They would continue performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together. White and Libby frequently requested the War Department to send them overseas during World War II to give USO concert performances for the troops. However, despite a Letter of Recommendation from Eleanor Roosevelt, they were constantly rejected as "too controversial", considering that the U.S. Armed Forces were still segregated throughout World War II. Meanwhile, White's album Harlem Blues: Josh White Trio (with Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
and Wilson Myers, on Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...
) produced the hit single "Careless Love
Careless Love
"Careless Love" is a traditional song of obscure origins.Blues versions are popular; the lyrics change from version to version, but usually speak of the heartbreak brought on by "careless love." Frequently, the narrator threatens to kill his or her wayward lover.The song's melody also is used in...
", while his highly controversial Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
album Joshua White & His Carolinians: CHAIN GANG, produced by John H. Hammond
John H. Hammond
John Henry Hammond II was an American record producer, musician and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s...
, was the first race record ever forced upon the white radio stations and record stores in America's South and caused such a furor that it reached the desk of President Franklin Roosevelt. On December 20, 1940, White and the Golden Gate Quartet, sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, made a historic Washington, D.C. concert at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium to Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery (the live recording of this concert was recently released on CD in 2005). One month later, White and The Golden Gate Quartet would perform at President Roosevelt's Inauguration in Washington. White refashioned his music, performance and image with his re-emergence on the entertainment scene in 1939 and 1940. The industry and audiences alike no longer saw a young southern black country boy, but instead a mature, self-educated, articulate, outspoken yet sophisticated 26-year-old man, who possessed a strikingly handsome and sexual bearing and personality both on and off the stage. He soon became the first blues performer to attract a large white
White American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
and middle-class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
following, and was the first African American artist to perform in previously segregated
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
venues in America, as he transcended the typical racial and social barriers of the time who associated blues with a rural and working-class African American audience, while performing in nightclubs and theaters during the 1930s and 1940s.?’
Throughout the 1940s, as a major matinee idol with magnetic sexual charisma and a commanding stage presence, White not only was an international star of recordings, concerts, nightclubs, radio, film, and Broadway, he also achieved a unique position for an African American of the segregated era by becoming accepted and befriended by white society, aristocracy, European royalty, and America's ruling family, The Roosevelts. One of his most popular recordings during the 1940s was "One Meatball," lyrics a song about a little old man who could afford only one meatball. The song is an adaptation by the American songwriters Hy Zaret
Hy Zaret
Hy Zaret was an American Tin Pan Alley lyricist and composer best known as the co-author of the 1955 hit "Unchained Melody", one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century.-Biography:...
and Lou Singer of a song called "Lay of the One Fishball" lyricshttp://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=354 by Harvard Professor George Martin Lane
George Martin Lane
George Martin Lane , American scholar, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts.He graduated in 1846 at Harvard, and in 1847-1851 studied at the universities of Berlin, Bonn, Heidelberg and Göttingen...
, which was to the tune of an English folk song called "Sucking Cider Through a Straw" lyrics. When offered the song he immediately recorded it and it became the first million-selling record by an African American male artist; according to his biographer, Elijah Wald
Elijah Wald
Indeed, his first book was a collaboration with his biologist mother entitled Exploding the Gene Myth, in which they wrote that "The myth of the all-powerful gene is based on flawed science that discounts the environment in which we and our genes exist." "There are no definitive histories," he...
, it was "Josh's biggest hit by far". The Andrews Sisters and Jimmy Savo
Jimmy Savo
Jimmy Savo was an American Vaudeville, Broadway, nightclub, film and television performer, comedian, juggler, and mime artist....
soon recorded their own versions, which also became hits (other cover versions were recorded in subsequent years by Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, Lightnin' Hopkins
Lightnin' Hopkins
Sam John Hopkins better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas...
, Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
, Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, Washboard jungle, Tom Paxton
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for over forty years...
, and Shinehead
Shinehead
Shinehead is an English-born Jamaican reggae singer/toaster/rapper.-Career:He began his music career by performing for different New York reggae dancehall sound systems in the 1980s, most notably Tony Screw's Downbeat The Ruler, based in The Bronx.His recording debut was in 1986 on the African...
).
White's hits during the 1940s include "Jelly, Jelly" (a tune with very sexual lyrics, composed by Earl Hines
Earl Hines
Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".-Early...
and Billy Eckstine
Billy Eckstine
William Clarence Eckstine was an American singer of ballads and a bandleader of the swing era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular...
); "The House I Live In (What Is America To Me)", a major patriotic American song during World War II, written by Earl Robinson
Earl Robinson
Earl Hawley Robinson was a singer-songwriter and composer from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is probably as well remembered for his left-leaning political views as he is for his music, including the songs "Joe Hill", "Black and White", and the cantata "Ballad for Americans"...
and Lewis Allan (the lyrics discuss what White hoped America would become after the war and government-sanctioned segregation would end; White had the first hit record with the song, then taught it to Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
for his MGM film short about the song
The House I Live In
The House I Live In is a ten-minute short film written by Albert Maltz, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Frank Sinatra...
which won an Academy Award); "Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
" (an Australian sailor taught this Australian folk song to White backstage at the Cafe Society; White re-arranged the song into a waltz tempo, then donated his services to the government by recording it the next week for the government's "V Disc" label to boost the moral of the troops overseas, and it became an immediate hit); "St. James Infirmary
St. James Infirmary Blues
"St. James Infirmary Blues" is based on an 18th century traditional English folk song of anonymous origin, though sometimes credited to the songwriter Joe Primrose . Louis Armstrong made it famous in his influential 1928 recording.-Authorship and history:"St...
" (new words and music by White); the old English folk song, "Lass With the Delicate Air"; "John Henry" (new words and music by White), "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
"Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" is a well-known negro spiritual.The song is believed to have been composed by slaves in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some references suggest that it was copyrighted by Jay Roberts in 1865...
" (new words and music by White), "The Riddle Song (I Gave My Love a Cherry)" (an old English traditional folk song), "Evil Hearted Man" (words and music by White), "Miss Otis Regrets" (by Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
), "The House of the Rising Sun
The House of the Rising Sun
"The House of the Rising Sun" is a folk song from the United States. Also called "House of the Rising Sun" or occasionally "Rising Sun Blues", it tells of a life gone wrong in New Orleans...
" (new words and music by White; recorded subsequently by Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, Leadbelly
Leadbelly
Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....
, Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, and in 1964 in a rock beat by The Animals
The Animals
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...
), and "Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit
"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who released her first recording of it in 1939, the year she first sang it. Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred...
.
White recorded in a wide variety of contexts, from recordings in which he was accompanied only by his own guitar playing, to others in which he was backed by guitar and string bass or piano, or jazz ensembles, gospel vocal groups, or even a big swing jazz band, as was the case with his popular 1945 recording, "I Left A Good Deal in Mobile". He also performed and recorded with the great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...
, and besides his duets with Libby Holman and with Leadbelly, he recorded and performed duets with Buddy Moss
Buddy Moss
Eugene "Buddy" Moss was, in the estimation of many blues scholars, one of two the most influential East Coast blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935...
, and performed often in duets with his friend Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
. He also recorded songs of social and political protest with Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, Burl Ives
Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American actor, writer and folk music singer. As an actor, Ives's work included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and motion pictures. Music critic John Rockwell said, "Ives's voice .....
, and Lee Hays in their folk cooperative group the Almanac Singers
Almanac Singers
The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with the labor movement...
and in the later group People's Songs which consisted of the core of musicians and activists who formed Almanac Singers
Almanac Singers
The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with the labor movement...
.
In 1945, with the immense success of his hit single "One Meatball", in addition to his national radio show, his appearance in the film Crimson Canary, and all the publicity emanating from the Cafe Society, White became the first African-American popular music artist to make a national concert hall tour of America, with the Jamaican singer/dancer Josephine Premice as his opening act. Other African-American concert tours to follow included Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
, Willie Bryant
Willie Bryant
Willie Bryant was an American jazz bandleader, vocalist, and disc jockey.Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Bryant grew up in Chicago and took trumpet lessons to little success. His first job in entertainment was dancing in the Whitman Sisters Show in 1926...
, Timmie Rogers
Timmie Rogers
Timmie Rogers was a popular African-American comedian who appeared on many national TV shows in the 1960s and 1970s. Rogers was one of the first Black comedians allowed to directly address a white audience when he worked...
, The Katherine Dunham Company
Katherine Dunham Company
The Katherine Dunham Company, a troupe of dancers, singers, actors and musicians, was the first African American modern dance company. It descended from Ballet Negre, a student troupe founded by Katherine Dunham, which later became the Negro Dance Troupe.The company had successful runs on Broadway...
, The Hall Johnson
Hall Johnson
Hall Johnson was one of a number of American composers and arrangers—including Harry T. Burleigh, R. Nathaniel Dett, and Eva Jessye—who elevated the African-American spiritual to an art form, comparable in its musical sophistication to the compositions of European Classical...
Choir, Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...
, Lillian Fitzgerald, The Chocolateers, and The Three Poms. The success of this tour created a demand for a return tour of America's concert halls the following year. On this second tour, White brought the innovative dancer/choreographer Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance...
, who had worked with him at the Cafe Society, as his opening act. Primus had choreographed several performance pieces to the music of White, and on this tour they would perform these numbers together. For the remainder of Pearl Primus's career, she would perform these pieces created with White as a major part of her concert program.
As an actor between the years of 1939 and 1950, White would appear in dozens of radio dramas, including the classic Norman Corwin
Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...
plays, and star or co-star on the New York stage in three musicals and three dramatic plays, in addition to appearing in several films. In February, 1945, Paramount Pictures in Hollywood optioned John Lomax
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk songs...
’s projected autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, with Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
to star as Lomax and White as Lead Belly. Lead Belly stayed in California until the end of the year, hoping to be involved in the project, but the film never got past the pre-production stage. However, White would appear in other films, including: The Crimson Canary (1945), in which he portrayed himself; the Hans Richter
Hans Richter (artist)
Hans Richter was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.-Germany:...
film Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.The film was produced by Kenneth Macpherson and Peggy Guggenheim....
(1947), co-starring with Libby Holman, which won the Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
and was a major contributor to the "avant-garde" film movement; and the John Sturges
John Sturges
John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra .-Career:He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932...
film The Walking Hills (1949), in which he co-starred with Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals , adventure tales, war films, and even a few...
, John Ireland
John Ireland (actor)
John Benjamin Ireland was an actor and film director.-Biography:Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he was raised in New York City from the age of 18. He started out in minor stage roles on Broadway...
, Ella Raines
Ella Raines
Ella Wallace Raines was an American film and television actress.-Life and career:Born Ella Wallace Raubes near Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, Raines studied drama at the University of Washington and was appearing in a play there when she was seen by Howard Hawks...
, and Arthur Kennedy
Arthur Kennedy (actor)
Arthur Kennedy was an American stage and film actor known for his versatility in supporting film roles and his ability to create "an exceptional honesty and naturalness on stage" especially in the original casts of Arthur Miller plays on Broadway.- Early life and education :Kennedy was born John...
, in one of Hollywood's
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
first films where an African American was portrayed as a racially equal character in the story.
As a leading artist/activist of the era, who had begun writing and recording political protest songs as early as 1933, and who would speak and sing at human rights rallies, White was prominently associated with the U.S. civil rights movement
American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans...
of the 1940s. This activism made White's politics suspect in Hollywood during the McCarthy era, and accordingly, The Walking Hills would be his final film role.
At the Cafe Society
It is impossible to divorce White's unprecedented rise to international fame in the 1940s from the Cafe SocietyCafé Society
Café society was the collective description for the so-called "Beautiful People" and "Bright Young Things" who gathered in fashionable cafes and restaurants in New York, Paris, and London beginning in the late 19th century...
nightclub. Located in New York's Greenwich Village, the Cafe Society was the first integrated nightclub in the United States, where blacks and whites could sit, socialize and dance in the same room and enjoy entertainment. It opened in late 1938 with a three-month engagement of Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
and comedian Jack Gilford
Jack Gilford
Jack Gilford was an American actor on Broadway, films and television.-Early life:Gilford was born Jacob Aaron Gellman on the lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, and grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn...
, immediately making it New York's hottest club.
One day, John Hammond asked White to meet Barney Josephson
Barney Josephson
Barney Josephson was the founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York’s first integrated nightclub. It was opened in 1938 by, among others, Billie Holiday and it was here that the singer first publicly performed the song Strange Fruit in 1939.-Early Years:Josephson was born and raised in...
, the owner of the club. As soon as Josephson heard White and saw the charisma he exuded, he told Hammond that White was going to become the first black male sex symbol
Sex symbol
A sex symbol is a celebrity of either gender, typically an actor, musician, supermodel, teen idol, or sports star, noted for their sex appeal. The term was first used in the mid 1950s in relation to the popularity of certain Hollywood stars, especially Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte...
in America. It was Josephson who decided at that first encounter, on the stage apparel he would have designed for White - that would become a trademark for years to come - a black velvet shirt open to the stomach and silk slacks. While starring at the Cafe Society over the next decade and becoming exposed to audiences, performers and beautiful music from around the world, White expanded his musical interests and repertoire to include a variety of styles which he would then subsequently record. He had remarkable success in popularizing recordings with a diverse group of musical genres, which ranged from his original repertoire of the Negro blues, gospel and protest songs, to Broadway show tunes, cabaret, pop, and white American, English and Australian folk songs.
The Greenwich Village club was so successful that Josephson soon opened a larger Cafe Society Uptown, at which White also performed, gaining him recognition by the New York Times as the "Darling of Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
". The Roosevelt family, New York society, international royalty, and Hollywood stars regularly came to see White at the Cafe Society, and he used his fame and visibility to create, foster and develop relations between blacks and whites, making him a national figure and voice of racial integration in America.
He was thought to have numerous romantic liaisons with wealthy society women, singers, and Hollywood actresses, but the rumors were never substantiated. The women in question always referred to White as their close friend, and Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
and Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...
also referred to him as a mentor.
The Cafe Society made White a star and put him in a unique position as an African American man. However, because of the club's unique social status of mixing the races, it also became a haven for New York's social progressives whose politics leaned to the Left
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. As it played a vital role in White's ascendance to stardom, it would also one day play a crucial role in his fall from grace.
White and the Roosevelts
Beginning in 1940, White established a long and close relationship with the family of Franklin and Eleanor RooseveltEleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, and would become the closest African American confidant to the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
; and the Roosevelts were the godparent
Godparent
A godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...
s of Josh White, Jr. (born November 30, 1940). In January 1941, White performed at the President's Inauguration, and two months later, he released another highly controversial record album, Southern Exposure, which included six anti-segregationist songs with liner notes written by the celebrated and equally controversial African American writer Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, and whose sub-title was "An Album of Jim Crow Blues". Like the Chain Gang album, and with revelatory yet inflammatory songs such as "Uncle Sam Says", "Jim Crown Train", "Bad Housing Blues", Defense Factory Blues", "Southern Exposure", and "Hard Time Blues", it also was forced upon the southern white radio stations and record stores, caused outrage in the South and also was brought to the attention of President Roosevelt. However, instead of making White persona-non-grata in segregated America, it resulted in President Roosevelt asking White to become the first African American artist to give a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
Command Performance, in 1941. Upon completing that first White House Command Performance, the Roosevelts invited White up to their private chambers, where they spent more than three hours talking about White's life story of growing up in Jim Crow
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
South, listening to his songs written about those experiences, and drinking Café Royale (coffee and brandy). At one point during that evening, the President said to White, "You know Josh, when I first heard your song `Uncle Sam Says,' I thought you were referring to me as Uncle Sam....Am I right?" White responded, "Yes Mr. President, I wrote that song to you after seeing how my brother was treated in the segregated section of Fort Dix army camp. . . However that wasn't the first song I wrote to you. . . In 1933, I wrote and recorded a song called `Low Cotton,' about the plight of Negro cotton pickers down South, and in the lyrics I made an appeal directly to you to help their situation." The President, interested and impressed at the candor of his response, then asked White to sing those songs to him again. A friendship developed, five more Command Performances would follow, in addition to two appearances at the Inaugurations of 1941 and 1945; and the White family would spend many Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with the Roosevelts at their Hyde Park, New York
Hyde Park, New York
Hyde Park is a town located in the northwest part of Dutchess County, New York, United States, just north of the city of Poughkeepsie. The town is most famous for being the hometown of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt....
mansion
Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site
The Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site preserves the Springwood estate in Hyde Park, New York, United States of America. Springwood was the birthplace, lifelong home, and burial place of the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
(now the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York is the first presidential library built in the United States. It was conceived and built under the direction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1939 to 1940.- History :...
). The President sent White to give concerts overseas as a "Goodwill Ambassador" and he was often referred to in the press as the "Presidential Minstrel."
More importantly, it was White's songs of social protest, such as "Uncle Sam Says"listen and "Defense Factory Blues,"listen which caused the President to begin exploring how to desegregate
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
the U.S. Armed Forces
Military of the United States
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
. Meanwhile, White's recordings of "Beloved Comrade" (the President's favorite song), "Freedom Road", "Free and Equal Blues", and "House I Live In (What is America to Me)", were great songs of inspiration to the Roosevelts and the country during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. After the President's death, White's younger brother William White became Eleanor Roosevelt's personal assistant, house manager and chauffeur for the remainder on her life.
In 1949, Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
honored White with an honorary doctorate; and the NBC National Radio series Destination Freedom produced and aired a one-hour dramatized biography on White's life titled "Help The Blind". In 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt (then the United Nations Ambassador in charge of War Relief) and White made a historical speaking and concert tour of the capitals of Europe to lift the spirits of those war-torn countries. The tour built to such proportions that when they arrived in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, the presentation had to be moved from the Opera House
Royal Swedish Opera
Kungliga Operan is Sweden's national stage for opera and ballet.-Location and Environment:...
to the city's soccer stadium where 50,000 came out in the pouring rain to hear Mrs. Roosevelt speak and White perform. All during this tour, audiences across Europe enthusiastically requested White to sing his famed anti-lynching recording of "Strange Fruit", but on each occasion he would respond, "My mother always told me that when you have problems in your background you don't give those problems to your neighbor.....So, that's a song I will sing back home until I never have to sing it again, but for you, I would now like to sing its sister song, written by the same man ('The House I Live In')."
Movies and theater
As an actor, White acted several more times on Broadway in the late forties. In 1947 he appeared in German artist and avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter's Dreams that Money Can Buy, co-starring Libby HolmanLibby Holman
Libby Holman was an American torch singer and stage actress who also achieved notoriety for her complex and unconventional personal life.-Early life:...
along with the participation of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Ferdinand Léger. It won an award at that year's Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
. He also appeared in John Sturges' 1949 western The Walking Hills with Randolph Scott, Ella Raines, Edgar Buchanan, and Arthur Kennedy, in which his character, an itinerant musician, was not a stereotype but on an equal footing with the white characters. He was still young and very handsome and it hard not to speculate on what might have been had the blacklist not put an end to his budding movie career.
1950s: White and the Blacklist
White had reached the zenith of his career when touring with Eleanor Roosevelt on a celebrated and triumphant Goodwill tour of Europe. He had been hosted by the continent's prime ministers and royal families, and had just performed before 50,000 cheering fans at Stockholm's soccer stadium. Amidst this tour, while in Paris in June, 1950, White received a call from Mary Chase, his manager in New York, telling him that Red ChannelsRed Channels
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television is an anti-Communist tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare...
(who had been sending newsletters to the media since 1947 about White and other artists who they warned as being subversive), had just released and distributed a thick magazine with subversive details regarding 151 artists from the entertainment and media industries who they labeled as Communist Sympathizers. White's name was prominent on this list. There never had been an official blacklist—until now. White immediately went to discuss the situation with Mrs. Roosevelt—to ask her advice and help. With great empathy, she told him that her voice on his behalf would hinder his efforts to clear his name. She explained that if she wasn't the widow of the president they would also be crucifying her. She continued that the Right Wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
press had been calling her a "pinko
Pinko
Pinko is a term for a person regarded as being sympathetic to communism, though not necessarily a Communist Party member.The term has its origins in the notion that pink is a lighter shade of red, the color associated with communism...
", citing her social activism and friendships with non-whites. That night, White called his manager back and alerted her that he would be flying back to America the next day so that he could clear his name. Upon arriving at New York's Idlewild Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
, the FBI met him, took him into a Customs holding room, began interrogating him, and held him for hours while waiting word from Washington as to whether White, who was born in America, would be deported back to Europe.
For a decade, White had been a leading voice of black America and a voice that reminded America of its social injustices, while also becoming a major pop star and sex symbol from his platform at the Cafe Society. However, when Barney Josephson's brother and attorney Leon, who was also a lawyer for the International Labor Defense (a politically progressive organization), was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC) in 1947 and refused to testify, he was sent to prison. The Right Wing media publicity centered on the Cafe Society as a hot bed of Communists. By December of that year, the original downtown club had to close, and by 1949, the uptown club was forced to shut its doors. Virtually every artist who regularly worked at the club had contributed to Left-leaning benefits and was suspected as being a Communist sympathizer. White was not a Communist, and was not active in any political party. However, when he was told that people's human rights were being threatened and asked to participate in a benefit or a rally, he was always willing to lend his voice to the cause. Whether it was the plight of African Americans in the South or oppressed people in Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, it was all the same to him. Since his return from Europe in June, 1950, White had been interrogated every week, and was threatened that his career would be finished and that he would lose his family. Controversially, in a fervent desire to defend his reputation, and challenge his accusers and the blacklist (while under intense pressure from his manager and his family), White told the FBI that he would go to Washington, appear before the HUAC Committee and set the record straight.
With the assistance of his daughter Bunny, White began writing a lengthy letter about his life and his beliefs that he would plan to read as a statement at his HUAC appearance. Before going to Washington, he made trips to visit two trusted friends and have them read his statement - Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson. Bunny accompanied him on his trip up to Hyde Park to visit Mrs. Roosevelt. She recalled the visit in an interview with Josh White Estate Archival biographer Douglas Yeager, "Mrs. Roosevelt told Daddy that he had written a good letter. However, she cautioned him not to go to Washington, explaining that the HUAC Committee would turn his testimony against him if he appeared and they weren't satisfied with his statement." A few days later, White drove up to Paul Robeson's Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
home by himself.
Paul Robeson, a former All-American football player, was a Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
-trained African American attorney fluent in 12 languages, who lived most of the 1920s and 1930s in London, and was very active in world human rights and the movement to decolonize Africa. However, he was best known as an international star of recordings and film, the most celebrated stage Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
in history, and the highest paid concert performer in the world. He also was the most respected and admired artist/activist throughout the world, with friendships that included the leaders of many countries including the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, where Robeson was considered a cultural and social giant and iconic figure. To the social progressives in America, he was the most respected and important voice of truth and social justice in the world. In 1939, at the onset of World War II in Europe, Paul Robeson and his family returned to America and maintained a residence in Connecticut. Robeson had been White's friend and artistic collaborator for many years and was the godfather to White's daughter Beverly. They did not always agree on everything politically, however White held great respect for Robeson. Years later in a radio interview, White stated that Robeson never once mentioned the Communist Party to him, and in fact advised White not to get too involved with any political party. Paul Robeson supported America's war effort and was considered a patriotic champion of freedom and liberty after his national radio broadcast concert performance and subsequent record album of "Ballad For Americans
Ballad For Americans
"Ballad For Americans" is an American patriotic cantata with lyrics by John La Touche and music by Earl Robinson. Originally titled "The Ballad for Uncle Sam", it was originally written for a WPA theatre project called Sing for Your Supper. Sing For Your Supper opened on April 24, 1939. Congress...
." However, when American Negro soldiers returning from the war were still confronted with government sanctioned segregation, racism and even lynchings, it became evident that Robeson was greatly disappointed with the American government. In the post war years, his socialist belief structure seemed better aligned to the Soviet Union, which had been America's ally in the war, but by 1947 had become their bitter enemy. In 1949, America's media and press reported a speech Robeson had made in [Paris], alleging that he said if a war would ever take place between the USSR and America that American Negroes would not fight in America's army (the U.S. media and press version of the speech has since been found to be inaccurate and slanted).
Before going to Washington, White felt he had to meet with Robeson, have him read his statement and tell him of decision to go to Washington. In White's statement which he showed to Robeson, and which would later be read before the HUAC Committee, one paragraph out of the long biographical letter referred to Robeson: "I have great admiration for Mr. Robeson as an actor and a great singer, and if what I read in the papers is true, I feel sad over the help he's been giving to people who despise America. He has a right to his own opinions, but when he, or anybody, pretends to talk for a whole race, he's kidding himself. His statement that the Negroes would not fight for their country, against Soviet Russia or any other enemy, is both wrong and an insult: because I stand ready to fight Russian or any enemy of America." In the biography, Robeson: Lives of the Left, Martin Duberman wrote about the encounter. Apparently White and Robeson went up to the bathroom of Robeson's master bedroom, turned on all the faucets so that the FBI listening devices couldn't hear their conversation, and began discussing White's statement and his upcoming appearance before HUAC. Robeson read the prepared statement, told White that he personally felt it would be wrong to go to Washington and appear before the HUAC Committee. He continued that he would never appear before the Committee, but that this was a decision White would have to make on his own. Reportly, White painfully told him, "I feel like a heel Paul, but they've got me in a vice...I have to go." White was called into the FBI offices dozens of times between 1947 and 1954, but no one is absolutely certain what special vice they had him in - besides threatening to destroy his career and family, as many of the pages found in his FBI files (via the Freedom of Information Act) are still blacked out by the government. It is the belief of White, Jr. and many others however, that the FBI, displeased with White's prowess with white women, used it against him (as they had done with Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
years earlier), by threatening him with imprisonment and saying that they would concoct a trumped up charge of violating the Mann Act, "for transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes."
On September 1, 1950, White, appearing without counsel and with only his wife Carol at his side, sat down before the HUAC Committee in Washington, D.C., regarding Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
influence in the entertainment industry and African American community. He did not give the HUAC Committee names of Communist Party members. At length, he told them of his life story as a child, seeing his father beaten and dragged through the streets of Greenville by white authorities, and having to leave home at the age of seven to lead street singers across America in order to feed his family. He defended his right and responsibility as a folksinger to bring social injustices to the attention of the public through his songs, and then passionately read the chilling lyrics of one of his most famous recordings, the anti-lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
song "Strange Fruit" (written by Abel Meeropol
Abel Meeropol
Abel Meeropol was an American writer and song-writer, best known under his pseudonym Lewis Allan and as the adoptive father of the young sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.-Biography:...
) which was then placed into the Congressional Record
Congressional Record
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
. He also included his words about Paul Robeson regarding the alleged statement Robeson had made in Paris.
White would later defend his testimony as a 'friendly witness' (a term applied to those who appeared voluntarily before the HUAC Committee) by claiming that he had a right to defend his name against unjust accusations, that the scope of his testimony was limited, that he did not state anything that was not already known, that he never gave the FBI or the HUAC Committee names of members of the Communist Party, and that he was sincerely opposed to Communism. However, testifying before the committee and speaking out against Paul Robeson angered his large socially progressive fan base, who believed that testifying before the HUAC Committee acknowledged their right to exist. Not being privileged to know the details of his FBI interrogations, many of this group also suspected that he had given the FBI names of Communist Party members, which he had not. The fact that the future career and reputation of baseball legend Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
was not hampered when he appeared before the HUAC Committee one year earlier, while expressing virtually the same words as White had about Robeson's alleged statement in Spain, did not seem to matter to White's detractors. Robinson's fan base did not derive from the political Left as White's had. White's HUAC appearance greatly affected his posthumous reputation in America, causing him to become the only artist of the era to be blacklisted by both the Right and Left. He felt immense pressures from several sides to appear before the HUAC Committee, and based upon his harsh early life experiences learned in Jim Crow South, it was apparent that White believed his only option to protect the lives of his family and career and to survive, was to figuratively "ride the fence post" -- go to Washington, denounce the Communist Party, but not name any names of Communist Party members. In the end, Mrs. Roosevelt had an astute understanding of the political climate in Washington and in America when she warned White that the government would turn his testimony against him. Indeed, this was the case, and White's blacklisting would not be lifted for years.
With work rapidly drying up in America, White relocated to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for much of 1950 to 1955, where he hosted his own BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio show, My Guitar Is Old As Father Time, resumed his recording career, with new successes such as "On Top of Old Smokey", "Lonesome Road", "I Want You and Need You", "Wanderings", "Molly Malone
Molly Malone
"Molly Malone" is a popular song, set in Dublin, Ireland, which has become the unofficial anthem of Dublin City....
" and "I'm Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town", and gave concert tours throughout Europe and beyond. However, back in the United States—the country of his birth—the McCarthy
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
anti-communist hysteria had already greatly dismembered White's career as early as 1947, when he lost his record contract and his national radio show, and was barred from appearing on other radio shows. His Hollywood blacklisting began in 1948, after completing his final film role in The Walking Hills, and he would not be allowed to appear on U.S. television from 1948 until 1963. Meanwhile, the 1940s politically Left-leaning social progressives who had survived the Red Scare
Red Scare
Durrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
, had begun reviving the folk music industry in America. They would keep White shut out from their folk festivals, their folk magazines, their emerging record companies, and their media and press for most of the remaining years of his life. However, in 1955, a brave, young owner of a new American record company, Jac Holzman
Jac Holzman
Jac Holzman was the founder, chief executive officer and head of both Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records.-Biography:He founded Elektra Records in his St. John's College dorm room in 1950 and Nonesuch Records in 1964...
, who wasn't afraid of the political pressure from the Right or the Left, offered White the opportunity to record again in his home country. He could only offer him $100, but he promised him artistic control and the best recording equipment available. They recorded the Josh White: 25th Anniversary album, which established Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
and slowly began reviving White's career by finding a young, new audience who made it possible for him to work again in America. Accordingly, his name and reputation in America has only begun to recover in recent years.
White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy invited him to appear on the national CBS Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President." President Kennedy told him how his records had inspired him when that President was a college student in the Roosevelt era.
Later life
Manhasset, New York
Manhasset is a hamlet and neighborhood in Nassau County, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2010 Census, the population was 8,080....
in 1969 of heart disease
Heart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
, White primarily performed in concert halls, nightclubs, and folk music venues and festivals around the world, and in 1961 starred in the Josh White Show for the Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
network in the United Kingdom. White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
invited him to appear on the national CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President." Later that year he was seen again on national television performing for the masses on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial is an American memorial built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The architect was Henry Bacon, the sculptor of the main statue was Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the interior...
at the historical March on Washington
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest political rally for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr...
. In 1964, White gave a Command Performance for the Prime Minister of Canada, Lester Pearson; and in January 1965 he performed at the Presidential Inauguration of Lyndon Baines Johnson. In his final years, he would make American television appearances on The Merv Griffin Show
The Merv Griffin Show
The Merv Griffin Show is an American television talk show, starring Merv Griffin. The series ran from October 1, 1962 to March 29, 1963 on NBC, September 20, 1965 to September 26, 1969 in first-run syndication, from August 18, 1969 to February 11, 1972 at 11:30 PM ET weeknights on CBS and again in...
, Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
's Playboy's Penthouse
Playboy's Penthouse
Playboy's Penthouse is an American variety / talk television show hosted by Playboy founder and then-editor/publisher Hugh Hefner. It was first broadcast on October 24, 1959 and ran in syndication for slightly more than one year with a second season starting on September 9, 1961 with Jack E...
and Hootenanny, among others. Meanwhile, he starred in two Josh White Concert Specials for national Swedish television in 1962 and 1967; starred in the 1965 ITV Network Special Heart Song: Josh White in the United Kingdom (with guest artists Julie Felix
Julie Felix
Julie Ann Felix is a folk rock recording artist, who was notably produced by Mickie Most on his RAK Records label.-Career:...
and Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
); while also guest starring on Canada's CBC-TV's Let's Sing Out with Oscar Brand in 1967; and making his final television appearance in May, 1969 on the Canadian CBC-TV variety show One More Time.
UK guitarist/entrepreneur Ivor Mairants
Ivor Mairants
Ivor Mairants was a professional jazz and classical guitarist, teacher and composer.With his wife Lily in 1958 he created Ivor Mairants Musicentre, a specialist guitar store in London that was the first of its kind in the country and is still among the foremost of its kind in the...
worked with White to create The Josh White Guitar Method (Boosey & Hawkes) in 1956. It was an extremely influential book for the fledgling UK blues/folk scene and was the first blues guitar instruction book ever published. UK guitarist John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
and American guitarist Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
(who was living in the UK at the time) have cited it as a critical influence on their playing.
Signature guitars
The success of the book The Josh White Guitar Method prompted Mairants to commission a Zenith “Josh White” signature guitar based on White's Martin 0021 from German guitar maker Oscar Teller. Scottish guitarist Bert JanschBert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
owned one of these models in his early playing years. On the last page of "Josh White Guitar Method" (printed 1956) there is a photo of this Zenith Josh White signature guitar and some text about it.
The Guild Guitar Company
Guild Guitar Company
The Guild Guitar Company is a USA-based guitar manufacturer founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a guitarist and music-store owner, and George Mann, a former executive with the Epiphone Guitar Company...
in the US worked with White on a signature model in 1965.
This fact was confirmed in a tv-program, The History Detectives, by Mark Dronge, whose father, Al, was one of the founders of
Guild Guitars. Mark Dronge took White to the Guild factory in 1965. A guitar made to White's specifications was made and was meant to become a signature guitar for White, but it was never mass produced. Mark Dronge explained that "The scene was starting to change. The Beatles were so influential and all these bands came out and the electric music was getting bigger and the plans for Josh White model just kind of fell by the wayside, unfortunately."
Carol White would vividly recount to White's archival biographer, Douglas Yeager, that in 1963-1964, the engineers of a new guitar company in development, spent several months with their paperwork and drawings on her dining room table, as White and the engineers designed the first round-bodied guitar. Upon completion, the first Ovation Guitar
Ovation Guitar
The Ovation Guitar Company, a holding of Kaman Music Corporation, is a guitar manufacturing company based in New Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Ovation primarily manufactures Steel-stringed acoustic guitars....
was called the "Josh White Model".
According to the "Ovation Original Program" White played "The Josh White Model" Ovation guitar at the Hotel America, Hartford, Connecticut, November 14 1966.
In 1965-1967, the Ovation Guitar Company did make a signature guitar for White and that was the first made for an African American. White was the first official Ovation endorser.
The Music Trades Article December 1966:
"Earlier this year, the present double parabolic form was perfected after extensive consultations with professional guitarists including the pioneering guitar folk singer, Josh White."
"Ovation Instruments unveiled their new line of acoustical guitars at a reception and dinner held last month at the Hotel America, Hartford, Conn. In a program which featured demonstrations by White, one of Americas best-known folk singers, and the Balladeers, a new, young, singing group; and remarks by Charles Kaman, president of Kaman Aircraft Corporation, parent company of Ovation Instruments, and Jim D. Gurley, program manager of Ovation Instruments, the features of the Ovation guitar models were presented to 300 representatives of the press and the music industry."
"Josh White, playing Ovation's "Josh White" model - declared to be the first guitar which the famous folk singer has ever endorsed - held the crowd spellbound. His thirty-minute performance brought forth every nuance of the instrument's unique capability to render clear treble and deep resonant bass notes. Closing the show with a family ensemble with his two daughters, Mr. White brought down the house. It was one of the rare occasions when he and his children, though all professionals, have played together as a group. Also featured were the Balladeers, a bright, young singing group from the Connecticut Valley..."
Nail problems
White had a hands-on influence on Ovation. White used to come to the factory. His fingernails were brittle and prone to cracking, a condition that got worse as he grew older. Ovation's subassembly foreman, Al Glemboski, made a cast of White's fingers, from which he made a set of fiberglass nails. White glued on these false nails with a special industrial glue called Eastman 910, which would later be marketed as Super Glue. He returned to the factory every other month for a new set of nails.Death
In 1961, White's health began a sharp decline as he experienced the first of the three heart attacksMyocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
and the progressive heart disease that would plague him over his final eight years. As a lifelong smoker he also had progressive emphysema
Emphysema
Emphysema is a long-term, progressive disease of the lungs that primarily causes shortness of breath. In people with emphysema, the tissues necessary to support the physical shape and function of the lungs are destroyed. It is included in a group of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary...
, in addition to ulcers, and severe psoriasis in his hands and calcium deficiency
Hypocalcaemia
In medicine, hypocalcaemia is the presence of low serum calcium levels in the blood, usually taken as less than 2.1 mmol/L or 9 mg/dl or an ionized calcium level of less than 1.1 mmol/L or 4.5 mg/dL. It is a type of electrolyte disturbance...
in his body that would cause the skin to peel off of his fingers and leave his fingernails broken and bleeding with every concert. During the last two years of his life, as his heart weakened dramatically, his wife Carol would put him in the hospital for four weeks after he completed each two-week concert tour. Finally, the doctors felt his only survival option was to attempt a new procedure to replace heart valve
Heart valve
A heart valve normally allows blood flow in only one direction through the heart. The four valves commonly represented in a mammalian heart determine the pathway of blood flow through the heart...
s. The surgery failed.
He died on the operating table on September 6, 1969 at the North Shore Hospital
North Shore Hospital
North Shore Hospital is a large public hospital in Takapuna, North Shore City, serving the northern part of the Auckland area. Located on Shakespeare Road near Lake Pupuke, it is administered by the Waitemata District Health Board, serving around 47,000 people a year.-Facilities:The hospital...
in Manhasset, New York
Manhasset, New York
Manhasset is a hamlet and neighborhood in Nassau County, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2010 Census, the population was 8,080....
.
When Associated Press interviewed Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
, upon learning of White's passing, he said, "I can't tell you how sad I am. I spent many, many hours with him in the years of my early development. He had a profound influence on my style. At the time I came along, he was the only popular black folk singer, and through his artistry exposed America to a wealth of material about the life and conditions of black people that had not been sung by any other artist."
Legacy
White was seen as an influence on hundreds of artists of diverse musical styles, including: Pete SeegerPete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, Lee Hays, Oscar Brand
Oscar Brand
Oscar Brand is a folk singer, songwriter, and author. In his career, spanning over 60 years, he has composed at least 300 songs and released nearly 100 albums, among them Canadian and American patriotic songs...
, Ed McCurdy
Ed McCurdy
Ed McCurdy was an American folk singer, songwriter, and television actor. His anti-war classic, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" , inspired and gave hope to those in the peace movement.-Career:...
, Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
, Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
, Cy Coleman
Cy Coleman
Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
, Joel Grey
Joel Grey
Joel Grey is an American stage and screen actor, singer, and dancer, best known for his role as the Master of Ceremonies in both the stage and film adaptation of the Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret. He has won the Academy Award, Tony Award and Golden Globe Award...
, Bob Gibson
Bob Gibson
Robert "Bob" Gibson is a retired American professional baseball player. Nicknamed "Hoot" and "Gibby", he was a right-handed pitcher who played his entire 17-year Major League Baseball career with St. Louis Cardinals...
, Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, Phish
Phish
Phish is an American rock band noted for its musical improvisation, extended jams, and exploration of music across genres. Formed at the University of Vermont in 1983 , the band's four members – Trey Anastasio , Mike Gordon , Jon Fishman , and Page McConnell Phish is an American rock band...
, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein , was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books...
, John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
, Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
, Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
, David Crosby
David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
, Mike Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, Danny Kalb
Danny Kalb
Danny Kalb is an American blues guitarist, and was one of the original members of the 1960s group, Blues Project.-Life and career:...
, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, John Fogerty
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
, Don McLean
Don McLean
Donald "Don" McLean is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".-Musical roots:...
, and Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996...
; in addition to those African American artists, such as Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, Robert Johnson, Brownie McGhee
Brownie McGhee
Walter Brown McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.-Life and career:...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
, Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance...
, Josephine Premice, Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...
, Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
, Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...
, Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
, Josh White, Jr., Jackie Washington
Jackie Washington/Jack Landron
Jack Landron is an Afro-Puerto Rican folksinger, songwriter, and actor. Because he had gone by "Jackie Washington" earlier in his career, he is often confused with the Canadian Jackie Washington, , who was a blues and jazz performer Jack Landron is an Afro-Puerto Rican folksinger, songwriter, and...
, the Chambers Brothers, and Richie Havens
Richie Havens
Richard P. "Richie" Havens is an African American folk singer and guitarist. He is best known for his intense, rhythmic guitar style , soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.-Career:Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children...
, who in the footsteps of White were also able to break considerable barriers that had hampered African American artists in the past.
Song and poetry tributes
- Bob GibsonBob Gibson (musician)Samuel Robert Gibson was a folk singer who led a folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was known for playing both the banjo and the 12-string guitar. He introduced a then largely unknown Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival of 1959. He produced a number of LPs in the decade...
& Shel Silverstein. (revered folk singer Bob Gibson, and his equally well known writing partner Shel Silverstein - both disciples of White), in 1979, wrote and recorded a song tribute, "Heavenly Choir", to three of their most beloved artists, Josh White, Hank Williams and Janis Joplin....all brilliant artists, who had lived hard, fought hard, and died young. (the first verse is to White, followed by the chorus).
- Peter Yarrow: After White's funeral, one of his protégés, Peter YarrowPeter YarrowPeter Yarrow is an American singer who found fame with the 1960s folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow co-wrote one of the group's most famous songs, "Puff, the Magic Dragon"...
of Peter, Paul & Mary, eulogized him in the song "Goodbye Josh", which he included on his first solo album Peter.
- Fellow South Carolina native Jack Williams wrote and recorded "A Natural Man" a tribute to White on his Walkin' Dreams album in 2002.
- Poet and historian Dr. Leatrice Emeruwa published the poem Josh White is Dead in 1970.
Personal life
In 1933, White married a New York gospel singer, Carol Carr. They raised Blondell (Bunny), Julianne (Beverly), Josh Jr., Carolyn (Fern), Judy, and a foster daughter, Delores, in their home in the Sugar HillSugar Hill, Manhattan
Sugar Hill is a neighborhood in the northern part of Hamilton Heights, which itself is a sub-neighborhood of Harlem, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is defined by 155th Street to the north, 145th Street to the south, Edgecombe Avenue to the east, and...
section of Harlem, New York. White's younger brother Billy (who he moved up from Greenville) and Carol's mother all lived with them in the White household. His father died in a South Carolina mental institution in 1930, the result of beatings at the hands of Greenville deputies a decade earlier. His mother, Daisy Elizabeth, a very stern and religious woman, remained in her hometown of Greenville, South Carolina and lived into her 80s. She came to visit White in New York several times a year and he traveled to see her in South Carolina, but she didn't allow his non-religious recordings in her home. Except for his childhood performances in her Greenville church in the 1920s, she never again saw her son perform, refusing to attend concerts where he sang non-sacred songs. His brother Billy and (future civil rights leader) Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
, Sam Gary
Sam Gary
Sam Gary was an African-American blues, spiritual and folk singer, who to the wider public is known for his long-lasting musical co-operation with Josh White....
and Carrington Lewis performed and recorded with White in "Josh White & His Carolinians" (from 1939 to 1940) and appeared with him in the Broadway musical John Henry. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Billy became Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
's house manager and chauffeur for the remainder of her life.
On occasion in the early 1940s, when the grandmother watched the children, Carol would join White in singing, performing and recording with the folk collaborative group, the Almanac Singers
Almanac Singers
The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with the labor movement...
. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Carol would appear as a guest on Eleanor Roosevelt's television talk show; and in 1982, she was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian Institution's 100th Anniversary Celebration of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Birth in Washington, while her son, Josh White, Jr., performed a musical program of songs his father had presented at one of his White House Command Performances. Josh White, Jr., a successful singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, educator, and social activist for the past 60 years, performed and recorded with his father as a duet from 1944 to 1961, in addition to performing together with him in two Broadway plays (Josh White, Jr. won a 1949 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for the play How Long Till Summer). At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, daughters Beverly, Fern, and Judy also performed, recorded and appeared on radio and television with White. In 1964, when new anti-segregationist legislation made it easier for African Americans to purchase real estate in previously all-white neighborhoods, Josh and Carol bought a duplex home in the Rosedale, Queens
Rosedale, Queens
Rosedale is a suburban neighborhood in Queens. The neighborhood is on the Nassau County, New York - Queens border and is part of Queens Community Board 13.- History :...
section of New York City. While daughter Beverly and her family lived upstairs, the couple lived in the downstairs home. White lived in this semi-suburban lifestyle for the remainder of his life, while wife Carol would continue to live there and work into her 80s, first as a clothing boutique manager, and then as a social worker to elderly people in nursing homes, until her sudden passing in 1998. One week before her fatal heart attack, Carol received final confirmation that the United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
would be honoring White in 1998 with his own postage stamp. When shown a mock-up photograph of the stamp by Josh's estate manager, Douglas Yeager, she expressed joy, gratitude and a long-awaited satisfaction—that after all those painful years of social isolation from the McCarthy era, Josh would finally be receiving the recognition he deserved. She felt that she could finally go now in peace. [The above information has been compiled by Josh White Archival biographer and manager of the Estate of Josh White (Sr.), Douglas Yeager].
Posthumous honors
- In 1983, Josh White, Jr., starred in the long-running and rave reviewed biographical dramatic musical stage play on his father's life Josh: The Man & His Music, written and directed by Broadway veteran Peter LinkPeter LinkPeter Link is an American composer, lyricist, music producer, stage director, and presently CEO/Creative Director of Watchfire Music, an on-line Inspirational record company and music store....
, which premiered at the Michigan Public Theatre in LansingLansing, MichiganLansing is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located mostly in Ingham County, although small portions of the city extend into Eaton County. The 2010 Census places the city's population at 114,297, making it the fifth largest city in Michigan...
, MichiganMichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. Subsequently, the State of Michigan formally proclaimed April 20, 1983, as "Josh White & Josh White, Jr. Day." - In 1984, when asked why his father's recordings were so hard to find, Josh White, Jr. said, "Normally, when a person of my old man's stature passes away, a flood of re-releases and best-of packages are dumped on the market. But when he died [...] there was only one memorial album that Elektra put out and, after that, there was nothing. That's why in my performances I never omit a section devoted to my father's songs, his interpretations of other people's songs, and his style of guitar playing."
- In 1987, the Josh White, Jr. tribute album to his father's music, Jazz, Ballads and Blues (RYKODISC, produced by Douglas Yeager) received a Grammy nomination.
- In 1996, Josh White, Jr. released a well received second tribute album to his father's music, entitled House of the Rising Son (Silverwolf, produced by Josh White, Jr., Douglas Yeager and Peter Link).
- On June 26, 1998, the United States Postal ServiceUnited States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a 32-cent postage stamp honoring White, unveiling it on Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
's National MallNational MallThe National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...
, followed by a concert tribute of his songs by Josh White, Jr. This same year, Smithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...
released an album of White's work, entitled Free and Equal Blues, his only solo album released on the label (though he was featured on several compilation works both before and after). - From 2002 to 2006, the historic Americana show Glory Bound, which starred Odetta, Ramblin' Jack ElliottRamblin' Jack ElliottRamblin' Jack Elliott is an American folk singer and performer.-Life and career:Elliot Charles Adnopoz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents in 1931. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy...
, Oscar BrandOscar BrandOscar Brand is a folk singer, songwriter, and author. In his career, spanning over 60 years, he has composed at least 300 songs and released nearly 100 albums, among them Canadian and American patriotic songs...
, and Josh White, Jr., toured America, in a salute to the first three folk and blues artists to be honored with U.S. Postage Stamps, Josh White, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. - On February 27, 2010, a 36" high bust of White was unveiled at the LeQuire Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee. It is part of an exhibit by the sculptor Alan LeQuire titled "Cultural Heroes," which will tour museums across America in the Fall of 2010. The exhibit's other cultural heroes, whose busts are honored alongside White were: Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and Billie Holiday.
Filmography
- 1945 - The Crimson Canary. Directed by John HoffmanJohn Hoffman (filmmaker)John Hoffman , was a masterful editor of montage sequences for several Hollywood studio features....
. - 1947 - Dreams That Money Can BuyDreams That Money Can BuyDreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.The film was produced by Kenneth Macpherson and Peggy Guggenheim....
. Directed by Hans Richter. - 1949 - The Walking Hills. Directed by John Sturges.
- 1998 - The Guitar of Josh White. Homespun Videos. (An instructional video featuring Josh White, Jr. showing his father's pioneering guitar techniques.)
- 2000 - Josh White: Free and Equal Blues / Rare Performances. DVD. Vestapol.
- 2010 - ``Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and RebelHugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and RebelHugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel is a 2010 documentary film directed by Brigitte Berman about Hugh Hefner, creator of Playboy magazine...
``. Written and Directed by Brigitte Berman
Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/movies/106560-hugh-hefner-playboy-activist-and-rebel/#ixzz1Mp7zLJQe
Other films containing recordings by White
- 1994 - Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American. Directed by Bette Jean Bullett.
- 2001 - Jazz, Episode Seven: "Dedicated to Chaos". Directed by Ken BurnsKen BurnsKenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs...
. - 2003 - Strange Fruit. Directed by Joel Katz.
- 2006 - Red Tailed Angels: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Directed by Pare Lorentz.
- 2006 - Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power. Directed by Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts.
- 2009 - History DetectivesHistory DetectivesHistory Detectives is a documentary television series on PBS. A group of researchers help people to seek answers to various historical questions they have, usually centering around a family heirloom, an old house or other historic object or structure...
. Episode: "In Search of Josh White's Guitar". - 2009 - American Folk. Part 3, of BBC4's five part series
- 2010 - Our World War II Fathers. Directed by Les Easter
External links
- "Josh White" by Amanda Guyer
- Illustrated Josh White discography
- Elijah Wald biography review
- Cover of The Josh White Guitar Method
- Article about Josh White
- Jewish Quarterly, about Libby Holman and Josh White
