Washington, White later said he “was born with music in me” and he spread the story of his life in song, much like his namesake. Named for African America hero and Black-rights orator Booker T. White was born sometime between 19 – he himself wasn’t certain – near the crossroads community of Sparta, Mississippi, far from the Delta and closer to Tupelo. Peter Daniels’ recent biography of White and Hard Rock, The Legend of Booker’s Guitar, shares several epic stories. “I could never, ever play slide guitar like Booker,” King said – which is one reason he developed his own, totally different style and his famed butterfly vibrato technique to mimic the sustain of White’s slide. King, to give up trying to play with a bottleneck. In fact, White’s slide work was so daunting it prompted his cousin, B.B. And so he’s been bottlenecking ever since.” And after, the next time I’d see him, he had a bottleneck. He wasn’t using even the bottleneck, too. “He wasn’t using no slide when I run up on him. If you believed his braggadocio, he inspired House’s slide playing: “Son House got that slide from me,” White once said. White’s playing itself was equally influential. to Johnny Winter to Mark Knopfler and beyond. In hindsight, White’s use of Hard Rock – along with Son House’s playing a Style O at the same time – may have been the most visible use of a National and one of the main inspiration for the broad fascination today with National resonator guitars, from John Hammond, Jr. Together, White and Hard Rock were the quintessential Mississippi blues combo on the revival scene in the ’60s and ’70s, from college shows and blues festivals to the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore halls, opening for the rock bands influenced by his music. White had his hard-traveled Duolian stripped and chromed after his October ’72 European tour. He was known as “Washington White, the Singing Preacher” on his 1930 Victor sides “Barrelhouse” in honor of his recording fame when his second session in ’37 yielded a hit (while he himself was imprisoned in Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, for gunning down a man) “Big Daddy” to his white blues fans during the folk-blues revival thanks to his ’73 LP and “Bukka White” a transliteration of the first name that he reportedly never liked but became the best-known. And Hard Rock was a hard-traveled guitar – much like White himself.īooker Talifiero Washington White had many a nickname too, a testament to his years as a cotton picker, mule driver, hobo, Negro League shortstop/pitcher, boxer, preacher, chain-gang convict, factory laborer, and yes, musician. “Hard Rock.” That’s the name used by Mississippi blues man Booker White to christen his 1933 National Duolian. Booker White plays Hard Rock in 1968 when the Duolian retained its frosted Duco finish.
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