Danny White

Born Joseph Daniel White on 6 July 1931 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the gritty singer passed away on 5 January 1996 in Capitol Heights, Maryland. Although his recording career proved brief and yielded only regional recognition, he has retained a loyal following among soul enthusiasts in the years that followed.

Throughout the 1950s he performed with several area R&B outfits, including a period as a member of Huey Smith’s backing unit the Clowns. His first solo outing came in 1961 on Dot Records with the coupling ‘Give A Take’/‘Somebody Please Help Me’. Over the ensuing six years he cut singles for Frisco, ABC-Paramount, Kashe, Atlas, Atteru, Unity, and Decca, interpreting material from emerging writers that included Earl King, Isaac Hayes and David Porter, and Allen Toussaint. The two sides he released on Decca—1966’s ‘Taking Inventory’/‘Cracked Up Over You’ and 1967’s ‘You Can Never Keep A Good Man Down’/‘Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye’—were overseen by Willie Mitchell before the producer’s Hi Records tenure. White’s entire output displayed the raw New Orleans vocal approach that brought modest local-chart success yet curtailed broader commercial reach. Beyond a pair of late-1970s releases on Rocky Coast, no further recordings appeared. He suffered a stroke in January 1996.