Tuesday, June 14, 1966 Summer Session Kansan
Page 11
Josh White: folk blues pioneer
NEW YORK —(UPI)— Josh White strode across the darkened stage and appeared suddenly under the spotlight like a dusky apparition. He casually threw one leg over a high stool, fondled his guitar against his green silk shirt and waited for the applause to ebb before beginning his first number:
"Dolia's cursed poor Tooley.
cursed him a wicked curse,
"I'll be hadn't shot her.
she'd have cursed him ten times worse.
"Delia's gone—one more round
-Delia's gone."
The words and music are Josh's own, but the total effect is a form of universal pathos called folk blues.
JOSH WHITE has been breathing soul into folk blues for almost 40 years, but he still ties all the strings together with a sure touch; the sliding blue notes riding on the persuasive beat, the precise phrasing and the cogent pauses are all there.
"I don't sing songs," Josh said afterward. "I tell stories. If I don't believe in the story behind a song, I can't sing it."
Framed against the white-washed brick backdrop of a Greenwich Village coffee house, Josh played and sang some of the standards of his repertory. The songs ranged from bluesy ballads to tones heavily spiced with honest sensuality; from the unabashed sentimentality of "Waltzing Matilda," to the bitter protest of "Strange Fruit."
AT 52, JOSHUA Daniel White,
one of the foremost living American folk artists, cabaret king,
musician, lover, fighter, has outlived enough hardship and enjoyed enough good times to know intimately about what he sings.
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"I was seven years ald when I left my home in Greenville, S.C., to lead a blind Negro singer while I played the tambourine. Before I was eight years old I knew what it was to be kicked and abused. Before I was nine I had seen two lynchings."
Josh made his first record when he was 16 and enjoyed some early success in radio. But during the Depression, Josh had an accident which left his right hand paralyzed for five years and almost ended his career in show business.
"THE DOCTORS wanted to cut
off three fingers, but I was stubborn—just hoped and prayed for a cure."
In 1939, Josh landed a role in a Broadway production called "John Henry." The musical only lost three weeks, but the exposure spiraled Josh and his newly-healed hand into a renewed recording and cabaret career.
During the 1940s, Josh was a regular performer at two of New York's most popular cabarets at that time, Cafe Society Uptown and Downtown. He became a friend of President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt and a regular guest at Hyde Park.
While on a European tour in 1950, Josh learned that his name had been listed as an alleged Communist sympathizer in "Red Channels," the notorious anti-Communist blacklist of the McCarthy era. He was accused of having performed for Communist-dominated groups.
JOSH ASKED to appear before the Senate Un-American Activities Committee. He explained to that panel that he had no knowledge of these groups' allegiance when he performed benefits for them.
"It was an awful blow. I realized that I had been played for a
sucker. I let myself be used (by the Radical Left)."
Despite his efforts to disengage himself from any hint of sympathy with the Red cause, Josh was shunned by the public for some time afterward. It was not until the folk music resurgence of the mid-50's that Josh finally shuffled off the stigma of the McCarthy years.
DURING THE LAST few years, Josh White has rewon many of the fans who came to see him perform during the 1940s. But more, he now has many converts from the new generation of young fans.
Any change will be an improvement.
All we do when we change the Volkswagen is to make it work even better.
We don't play with the way it looks.
So the 1966 VW still looks the same.
And there you have the whole Volkswagen point of view:
We keep looking for ways to improve it.
And then we knock our brains out to make the new pieces fit old VWs, too.
And every one has made the car a touch better than it was before.
All the improvements make a fat book.
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This year, the backs of the front seats can be locked so they won't push forward.
Engine power's increased for the 4th time.
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