Josh White’s Midnight Reprieve

Long before magic dragons puffed, while a famous nasal protestor of flyin’ cannonballs diapers were still blowin’ in the wind, Josh White was the voice of gritty folk. White was the first African-American  to be invited for a command performance at the White house, summoned by Franklin D. Roosevelt back in ’41. Rooted in blues and spirituals, White’s music was street smart, featuring raw and gritty portraits of life on society’s low end.

White’s entry into the music business was as a street performer, hired out at the age of 7 by Blind Man Arnold to take care of him and collect the money passerby tossed into his bucket. But White’s vocal and dancing skills soon prompted Arnold to loan White out to other street performers, including Blind Blake. White soaked up the guitar styles of the street singers so well that by 1927, at the age of 13, he was working as a session man for Paramount Records.

In 1930 White was recruited by ARC records to sing gospel as Joshua White, the Singing Christian, and also as Tippy Barton. A couple of years later the label switched him to blues, recording under the name Pinewood Tom. He was also used as a session guitarist for Leroy Carr and others.
In 1940, White’s charisma got him cast as Blind Lemon Jefferson in the Broadway play John Henry with Paul Robeson.The show didn’t run long, but got White a lot of attention and bookings with Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, and Leadbelly. A six month engagement with Leadbelly at New York’s Village Vanguard with White billed as “The Joe Louis Of the Blues Guitar” established White’s career.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were big fans, becoming the godparents of White’s son, Josh Jr. White performed at Roosevelt’s inauguration in ’41,the first African-American artist invited for a command performance. The president was so impressed with White that he invited him to his chambers to discuss racism. White had already released several controversial albums including An Album Of Jim Crow Blues and Joshua White & His Carolinians: Chain Gang, and would continue to record protest songs throughout his career. Nevertheless, Roosevelt was so impressed with his candor and spirit that he named White his goodwill ambassador and sent him overseas to perform.

It all came apart for White in 1950, when he was blacklisted for his “subversive activities, and was virtually unable to find work in this country until ’63, when President Kennedy got him on CBS Television’s civil rights special Dinner with the President.

But there was at least one person in the music business in America in the ’50s willing to give White a chance to work. Although he only offered White $100, Elektra records founder Jac Holzman recorded what would become White’s seminal album over two nights in a converted Manhattan Church in 1955. Josh at Midnight is a master class in stripped-down performance: just one mic, White and his guitar, and bassist Al Hall. Vocalist Sam Gary harmonizes with White on several cuts, but this is White’s show, and he remains the main attraction. Recently re-released on Ramseur Records, founded and run by Avett Brothers and Carolina Chocolate Drops manager Dolph Ramseur, White redefines the face of folk here.

Although he draws from the same canon, White takes the spirituals and blues his folkie peers have borrowed and adapted for ages, reworking them into laid-back conversations, connecting with his audience as easily as if chatting with old friends. Although White’s career was in ruins, you’d never know it to hear him sing. He’s warm and engaging, but with plenty of power in his delivery.

White was known for his activism through his music, but this offering focuses on pure entertainment. “Raise A Ruckus” dates back to the mid-1800’s, and most versions, including Old Crow’s Medicine’s show bluegrassy version, have these slavery-era lyrics included: “My old mistress promised me/That when she died she’d set me free/she lived so long that her head got bald./I finally had to kill her with a white oak maul.” But White’s rendition tells of thieving preachers stealing taters from his front field and old Aunt Donna’s ride into town riding a billygoat, leading a hound, landing on her rump when the hound dog barked and the billy jumped.

White lightens up “St James Infirmary” as well. Louis Armstrong ‘s version is a dirge, slow dragging at a funeral pace. Satchmo cheers things up by throwing in a chuckle or two as he lets you know he wants to go go out in style. But White is the slick ladies man all the way thru, his delivery buttery smooth, glibly dictating his wishes to “stick a jazz band on my hearse wagon/ raise hell as I stroll along.”

“One Meatball” dates back to the 1850s, written by Harvard Latin professor George Martin Lane and covered by artists including the Andrews Sisters, Dave Van Ronk and Ry Cooder. It’s the tale of a poor man who only has enough money to dine on one meatball for his dinner, and is humiliated when he asks for some bread and the waiter yells loudly enough for all the other diners to hear, “You gets no bread with one meatball!”

Composed in 1940 by jazz greats Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, “Jelly Jelly” is a low down, salacious tribute to love-making turned deadly. “Jelly roll killed my mommie-ran my daddy stone blind,” White moans, after admitting that jelly stays on his mind most of the time. He volunteers the info that he’s got 19 women living in his neighborhood. “18 are fools, but that other gal ain’t no goddam good.” But that’s OK, because “she makes me holler ooh baby, ooh baby, ooh,” he sighs, his squeal of pleasure at the end of the lyric leaving no doubt that she’s no good, but  sure is good for something else.

It’s a master class in performance, White’s smooth delivery and mellifluous voice smoothing out even the most hard core blues into an intimate one-on-one conversation that would charm the meanness out of even the most vitriolic haters. It’s a true classic, a resurrected joy that needs to be shared and restored to its rightful place as a timeless guiding light for roots music and it’s purveyors.