Josh White Jr., who began his long career at the age of 4 performing with his father, legendary blues singer and guitarist Josh White, before making his debut in the 1960s folk revival in Greenwich Village. Identified, died on 28 December. Home in Rochester, Mich. A day after announcing his retirement. He was 84 years old.
His manager Douglas Yeager confirmed the death.
Josh White Sr. was among the country’s leading blues and folk musicians in the 1930s and ’40s, as well as a leading cultural figure in the civil rights movement of the time. He sang at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second inauguration and later joined Eleanor Roosevelt—a close friend and Josh Jr.’s godmother—on a goodwill tour around Europe after World War II.
The elder Mr. White was a regular at Cafe Society, the racially integrated Greenwich Village music venue where Billie Holiday often performed. During a show there in 1945, a loud, confident voice rose from the audience, singing along. The crowd cheered, and he brought his son on stage for the rest of the performance.
“You may think he didn’t bring down the house, but he certainly left me out in the cold,” he told United Press International in 1948.
Josh White Jr. – known to his friends as Donnie, after his middle name, Donald – became a frequent companion to his father, touring with him around the country and appearing on radio and television. Looked together.
Some of the famous songs from the elder Mr. White’s repertoire, such as “a meatball,Became signature pieces in his son’s youth.
Josh White Sr. was blacklisted in the 1950s for refusing to identify members of the Communist Party before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
With his father unable to perform in the United States and effectively exiled to Europe, the younger Mr. White turned to stage and screen. He appeared frequently on and off Broadway, as well as in dozens of plays made for television.
He went on his own in 1961, just at the time when the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village were expanding and included musicians such as Bob Dylan, John Baez and more. Dave Van Ronk.
Although he developed his own following, he remained unabashedly his father’s son: his guitar playing remained close to his father’s style, and in 1983 he created “Josh: The Man and His Music”, which A one-man show held in Lansing, Mich. About his father, who died in 1969.
Critics praised him, but he often scrutinized his performances and interviews as struggling under the weight of the father of a son — after all, he said, he still played “one meatball.”
replied Mr. White loudly.
“I still sing his songs because it’s my show and I can sing whatever I want,” he told The Montreal Gazette in 1985. “I sing them for people who miss my father, and for people who never had the chance to hear his music.”
Joshua Donald White Jr. was born on November 30, 1940 in Manhattan. His mother, Carol Carr White, was a gospel singer. White lived in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem and counted many black actors as neighbors, including Marian Anderson And tap-dancing brothers Gregory And Morris Hines.
He attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, where his classmates included actors Elliott Gould and Christopher Walken and musicians. Marvin Hamlisch. He and Mr. Hamlisch co-wrote “See So,” the first song Mr. White recorded under his own name in 1956.
He married Jackie Harris in 1963. While he was on tour in 1971, a burglar broke into his Manhattan apartment and killed him. Bereft, Mr. White stopped performing extensively and moved to Wappingers Falls, NY, on the Hudson River with his two children, Josh III and Jason.
He kept a regular gig: a longtime commitment to the Raven Gallery, a Detroit folk venue, and in 1976 he moved to the area. In 1978, he married Sarah Terteling.
She survives him along with her son Josh III. her stepchildren, Eric, Elizabeth, Tricia and Kristen Terteling; his sisters, Beverly and Judith; 18 grandchildren; and 15 grandchildren. Their son, Jason, died last year.
By the 1980s Mr. White was back to performing regularly — 200 gigs a year, mostly on college campuses. He was often joined on tour by other great old faces of the folk scene, such as Arlo Guthrie, Odetta and his close friend Pete Yarrow. who died on Tuesday..
And he became a major figure on Detroit’s cultural scene, so prominent that when Pope John Paul II visited the city in 1987, Mr. White served as an official host during his public appearances.
Their last public performance was in April 2024 at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston. With his health failing, his manager, Mr. Yeager, pushed him into retirement. In a Dec. 27 phone call, he agreed.
“I guess everybody has to retire at some point,” Mr. Yeager recalled Mr. White saying. He died the next day.