Rating:
Genre:
Blues
Release Date: 09/03/2002
Josh White had a remarkable talent for self-reinvention, and his career -- which began in the 1920s and stretched essentially uninterrupted all the way into the '60s -- is an amazing story of adaptability and survival. Slick, sly, and fiercely intelligent,
White became a sort of pre-
Harry Belafonte black sex idol, complete with a leftist social and political agenda, during his so-called
cabaret blues period in the late '40s, and when the McCarthy era led to his blacklisting, he rebounded into the
folk revival period with several carefully assembled albums for
Jac Holzman's
Elektra label that recast him as a
folk balladeer. Although some
folk purists were aghast, doubting
White's authenticity as a
folk-blues performer (perhaps unaware of
White's solid
Piedmont blues background and his fine run of vintage
blues 78s in the '30s), the fact remains that
White was an excellent acoustic guitar player and a subtle and versatile singer who carefully selected his material, well aware of how it made him appear. This double-disc, 42-track set is drawn from
White's
cabaret period and features recordings he made in New York between 1944 and 1947 (disc one) and in London in 1950 and 1951 (disc two). The range of styles here is telling, as
White rolls all manner of songs, from light
gospel to small-combo
jazz and
blues, into a kind of folky high art. Among the highlights are a stark reading of
Billie Holiday's
"Strange Fruit" and
White's small-combo
jazz take on
Casey Bill Weldon's classic
"I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town." Fiercely independent, and always in control of his own image in an era when black performers were seldom afforded that luxury,
White helped pave the way for
Belafonte, who followed the same sort of template to international stardom a mere half-dozen years after these recordings were made.
~Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
;)
Listen
