EGN NEWS DESK
Josh White Jr., who started his lengthy profession at age 4 performing alongside his father, the famed blues singer and guitarist Josh White, earlier than carving out his personal identification within the Sixties people revival based mostly in Greenwich Village, died on Dec. 28 at his house in Rochester, Mich., at some point after saying his retirement. He was 84.
His manager, Douglas Yeager, confirmed the demise.
Josh White Sr. was among the many nation’s main blues and people musicians within the Thirties and ’40s, in addition to a number one cultural determine within the civil rights motion of the time. He sang at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second inauguration and later joined Eleanor Roosevelt — an in depth buddy and Josh Jr.’s godmother — on a good-will tour round Europe after World War II.
The elder Mr. White was a daily at Cafe Society, the racially built-in Greenwich Village music spot the place Billie Holiday usually carried out. During a present there in 1945, a excessive, assured voice rose from the viewers, singing together with him. The crowd cheered, and he introduced his son onstage for the remainder of the efficiency.
“Maybe you assume he didn’t carry down the home,” he informed United Press International in 1948, “however he certain did go away me within the chilly.”
Josh White Jr. — identified to his associates as Donnie, after his center identify, Donald — turned a frequent collaborator together with his father, touring with him across the nation and showing with him on radio and tv.
Some of the best-known songs within the elder Mr. White’s repertoire, like “One Meatball,” turned signature items in his son’s youthful oeuvre.
Josh White Sr. was blacklisted within the Fifties for refusing to establish members of the Communist Party earlier than the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
With his father unable to carry out within the United States and successfully banished to Europe, the youthful Mr. White turned to the stage and display screen. He appeared steadily on and off Broadway, in addition to in dozens of made-for-television dramas.
He went on his personal in 1961, simply in time for the people revival that sprang from the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village and concerned musicians like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk.
Though he developed his personal following, he remained unabashedly his father’s son: His guitar enjoying stayed near his father’s fashion, and in 1983 he created “Josh: The Man and His Music,” a one-man present staged in Lansing, Mich., about his father, who died in 1969.
Critics praised him, however they usually scrutinized his performances and interviews for proof of the son struggling beneath paternal weight — in spite of everything, they mentioned, he nonetheless performed “One Meatball.”
Mr. White responded forcefully.
“I nonetheless sing his songs as a result of it’s my present and I can sing what I need,” he informed The Montreal Gazette in 1985. “I play them for individuals who keep in mind my father, and for individuals who by no means had the prospect to listen to his music.”
Joshua Donald White Jr. was born on Nov. 30, 1940, in Manhattan. His mom, Carol Carr White, was a gospel singer. The Whites lived within the Sugar Hill part of Harlem and counted quite a few Black performers amongst their neighbors, together with Marian Anderson and the tap-dancing brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines.
He attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, the place his classmates included the actors Elliott Gould and Christopher Walken and the composer Marvin Hamlisch. He and Mr. Hamlisch co-wrote “See Saw,” the primary tune Mr. White recorded beneath his personal identify, in 1956.
He married Jackie Harris in 1963. While he was on tour in 1971, a burglar broke into their Manhattan residence and murdered her. Bereft, Mr. White largely stopped performing and moved with their two kids, Josh III and Jason, to Wappingers Falls, N.Y., alongside the Hudson River.
He saved one common gig: a longstanding dedication to the Raven Gallery, a Detroit people venue, and in 1976 he moved to the world. In 1978, he married Sara Terteling.
She survives him, alongside together with his son Josh III; his stepchildren, Eric, Elizabeth, Tricia and Kristen Terteling; his sisters, Beverly and Judith; 18 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. His son Jason died final yr.
By the Eighties Mr. White was again to performing often — as much as 200 gigs a yr, totally on school campuses. He usually joined different grand previous faces of the people scene on tour, like Arlo Guthrie, Odetta and his shut buddy Pete Yarrow, who died on Tuesday.
And be turned a fixture on the Detroit cultural scene, eminent sufficient that when Pope John Paul II visited the town in 1987, Mr. White acted as an official host throughout his public appearances.
His final public efficiency was in April 2024, on the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston. With his well being slowing him down, Mr. Yeager, his manager, pushed him to retire. In a cellphone name on Dec. 27, he agreed.
“I assume all people’s received to retire someday,” Mr. Yeager recalled Mr. White saying. He died the subsequent day.
