Josh White: Forgotten Guitarist Remembered
Sunday, March 15th, 2009Josh White was a protest songwriter before it became more popularized in the sixties. He portrayed a style more along the lines of a workingman’s protester of skinflint businesses. He is like Woody Guthrie in being a workingman’s voice, but playing a country blues and gospel oriented style. His music branched out into other realms like jazz, cabaret, folk, and Tin Pan Alley.
White’s recordings were prolific on labels like Vocalion Records and Emerson Records, which were black record labels doing business in the 1920’s and 30’s. In the McCarthy era White ended up on a list of people believed to be communists because of his protest songs. Many of his songs were anti-segregationists and concerning human rights.
Josh White had a definite influence on future generations of musicians and singers like Eartha Kitt, Bob Dylan, Odetta, Mike Bloomfield, Merle Travis, Pete Seeger, Richie Havens and numerous others. The unique voicings and styling of his guitar playing has captured the imagination of many guitarists.
Josh White came from a Christian home; he was the son of Reverend Dennis White and Daisy White. They lived in Greenville, North Carolina. He was born in 1914. His parents named him after an important figure in the Bible named Joshua. After his father suffered injustices and was put into a mental institution and then died in 1930…young Josh White felt the grave responsibility of stepping into his father’s shoes.
After his father had been deceased for two months, he started roaming the southern musical circuit with Blind Man Arnold a street performer. Josh soon became adept at singing, dancing, playing the tambourine, and then the guitar.
He collected the money for Arnold who sent Joshua’s mother a sum of $2.00 per week and there were four children at home. He worked with Arnold for eight years; during that time Arnold farmed Josh out to sixty-six different performers who were blind. Two of these artists were Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Joe Taggart. Josh and the blind artists walked wherever they went such as Chicago, Dallas, and Miami.
While working in Chicago in 1927, his genius as a guitarist caught the attention of Mayo Williams of Paramount Records. Williams gave him a job as a session’s guitarist. But Taggart and Arnold held him under their thumbs until Williams forced them to free him in 1928 by saying he would report them to the cops for mistreating Josh. They still had him sleeping in a horse stable and not allowed to wear long pants or shoes in the cold. Williams made Arnold buy Josh shoes and a suit and he moved Josh into a hotel. He also had to start paying Josh for his recordings. Josh had already had a hit with Taggart called “Scandalous and Ashamed.”
To be Continued…
References:
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