Josh White Jr., who built on his father's folk legacy, dies at 84

Josh White, Jr. began playing alongside his father, famed blues singer and guitarist Josh White, at the age of four before establishing his own identity in the Greenwich Village-based 1960s folk revival. He passed away on December 28th after starting a long career. At his home in Rochester, Michigan, the day after he announced his retirement. He was 84 years old.

His manager, Douglas Yeager, confirmed the death.

Josh White Sr. was one of America's leading blues and folk musicians of the 1930s and 1940s, and a leading cultural figure in the civil rights movement of the time. He sang at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration, and then joined close friend and Josh Jr.'s godmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, on a goodwill tour of Europe after World War II. .

The older Mr. White was a regular at Café Society, a racially integrated Greenwich Village music spot where Billie Holiday often performed. During a show there in 1945, high, confident voices rose from the audience and sang along with him. The crowd cheered and he brought his son onto the stage for the rest of the performance.

“You probably think he didn't bring the house down,” he told United Press International in 1948. “But he certainly left me out in the cold.”

Josh White Jr. (known to friends as Donny after his middle name Donald) became a frequent collaborator with his father, touring with him across the country and appearing on radio and television together. I also appeared on the show.

Some of the most famous songs in the older Mr. White's repertoire, such as “One Meatball,” became signatures of his son's younger work.

Josh White Sr. was blacklisted in the 1950s for refusing to identify Communist Party members before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

With his father unable to perform in the United States and effectively exiled to Europe, the young Mr. White turned to stage and screen. He frequently appeared on and off Broadway, and also appeared in dozens of television dramas.

He struck out on his own in 1961, just in time for the folk revival that began in Greenwich Village coffeehouses and included musicians such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Dave Van Ronk.

Although he developed a following for himself, he remained unashamedly his father's son. His guitar playing was close to his father's style, and in 1983 he created a one-man show, “Josh: The Man and His Music,” performed in Lansing, Michigan. , about his father, who died in 1969.

Critics praised him, but often scrutinized his performances and interviews for evidence of a son struggling under the weight of his father. After all, he was still playing “One Meatball,” they said.

Mr. White answered emphatically.

“I still sing his songs, because this is my show and I get to sing what I want to sing,” he told the Montreal Gazette in 1985. ”

Joshua Donald White Jr. was born on November 30, 1940 in Manhattan. His mother, Carol Kerr White, was a gospel singer. The whites lived in Harlem's Sugar Hill neighborhood, where there were many black performers in the neighborhood, including Marian Anderson and the tap dancing brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines.

He attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, where his classmates included actors Elliott Gould and Christopher Walken, and composer Marvin Hamlisch. He and Mr. Hamlisch co-wrote the first song Mr. White recorded under his own name, “See Saw,'' in 1956.

He married Jackie Harris in 1963. While on tour in 1971, robbers broke into their Manhattan apartment and killed her. Grief-stricken, Mr. White largely stopped performing and moved with his two children, Josh III and Jason, to Wappingers Falls, New York, on the Hudson River.

He moved to the area in 1976, having been involved with Detroit folk venue Raven Gallery for many years. He married Sarah Tertelling in 1978.

She is survived by his son Josh III; his stepsons Eric, Elizabeth, Tricia and Kristen Terteling; his sisters, Beverly and Judith; 18 grandchildren. and 15 great-grandchildren. His son Jason died last year.

By the 1980s, Mr. White returned to regular performing, performing up to 200 times a year, primarily on college campuses. He often toured with other great old faces of the folk scene, like Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, and his good friend Pete Yarrow, who passed away Tuesday.

And when Pope John Paul II visited the city in 1987, Mr. White became so entrenched in Detroit's cultural scene that he served as the official master of ceremonies at a public event.

His last public performance took place in April 2024 at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston. As his health deteriorated, his manager, Mr. Jaeger, urged him to retire. He agreed in a Dec. 27 phone conversation.

“I think everyone has to retire at some point,” Mr. Yeager recalled Mr. White saying. He died the next day.