Bukka White

Born as Booker T. Washington White in the Mississippi town of Houston—distinct from its Texas counterpart—in 1906, contrary to the conflicting years sometimes listed elsewhere, the future musician first absorbed fiddle melodies from his father. Guitar lessons came next, though his grandmother forbade what she called “that Devil music” inside the home; his father nevertheless supplied an instrument. At fourteen White visited an uncle in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he claimed to be twenty-one and used his playing to draw female attention. He soon crossed paths with Delta blues figure Charley Patton, whose guidance sharpened White’s technique in both music and personal conduct. Parallel to these pursuits he competed in Negro Leagues baseball and briefly boxed.

In 1930 furniture salesman and Victor talent scout Ralph Limbo introduced White to the label; the artist traveled to Memphis and cut fourteen tracks blending blues with gospel under the name Washington White, though only four sides reached release. With the Depression underway, another session opportunity arose only in 1937 when Big Bill Broonzy summoned him to Chicago for Lester Melrose’s label. At that moment White faced legal trouble—he later recounted being “ambushed” on a highway, shooting his assailant in the thigh in self-defense—yet he skipped bail, reached Chicago, recorded two numbers, and was returned to Mississippi for a three-year term at Parchman Farm. During his incarceration the earlier release “Shake ’Em on Down” became a hit.

Model conduct earned him the nickname “Barrelhouse” among inmates and guards alike, and under the billing “Washington Barrelhouse White” he performed two pieces for John and Alan Lomax at the prison in 1939. Freed in 1940, he returned to Chicago carrying twelve fresh compositions for Melrose; those performances later formed the core of his enduring repertoire and are now viewed as the summit of his recorded legacy. The session yielded such enduring Delta blues pieces as “Parchman Farm Blues” (unrelated to Mose Allison’s unrelated composition later interpreted by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Blue Cheer), “Good Gin Blues,” “Bukka’s Jitterbug Swing,” “Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues,” and “Fixin’ to Die Blues.” White then vanished from the scene, absorbed instead by factory work in Memphis throughout World War II.

Bob Dylan included “Fixin’ to Die Blues” on his 1961 Columbia debut, at a time when industry observers assumed the composer must already be deceased. California collectors John Fahey and Ed Denson doubted that verdict and in 1963 mailed a letter addressed simply to “Bukka White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi.” A relative employed at the Aberdeen post office forwarded it to White in Memphis. Contact with Fahey and Denson led swiftly to a contract with Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label before the close of 1963; White marked the turn of events with the new composition “1963 Isn’t 1962 Blues” and soon delivered three albums of material that Strachwitz titled Sky Songs in reference to White’s practice of “reaching up and pulling songs out of the sky.” Aware that spontaneous invention could not sustain every performance, he also revisited his 78-rpm discs and re-mastered the earlier Melrose numbers. Though roughly the same age as other surviving figures from the 1920s and 1930s Delta and Memphis blues circles, White presented himself as a sharp dresser in robust health, an engaging performer and storyteller who clearly relished the spotlight on the 1960s folk-festival and coffeehouse circuit.

By the 1970s, however, the acoustic-blues spotlight had grown routine. White’s musical preferences had evolved, and he longed to play electric guitar fronting a band in the manner already proven successful by his longtime acquaintance Chester Burnett, known as Howlin’ Wolf, and by his own cousin B. B. King. Recalling the public reaction that greeted Bob Dylan’s electrification, he refrained from that shift and remained on the festival circuit until his death, vigorously attacking his National steel guitar while occasionally extending monologues or rendering performances more idiosyncratically than usual. Audiences waited to hear “Parchman Farm Blues,” sometimes under the misapprehension that they were witnessing the originator of the piece Eric Clapton had popularized.

Contrary to the claims of certain blues purists, White’s post-1940 recordings retain substantial value. An uncommonly magnetic performer, he invested more of himself in his work than many artists across any genre. The Arhoolie Sky Songs albums preserve both his charm and candor, most vividly in the extended spoken passage “Mixed Water.” Likewise, the 1974 album Big Daddy, issued by Arnold S. Caplin’s Biograph label, stands as a noteworthy achievement that merits attention.