I've been reading Elijah Wald's fine biography
Josh White, Society Blues the sessions listed in
Blues and Gospel Records and the illustrated discography of
Stefan Wirtz. B&GR notes before Josh\s March 1940 session:
From this point Josh White's recordings changed in character as they became increasingly targetted at a wider audience.
The break cam in 1936 when Josh badly damaged his hand. Over the next 3-4 years he took time to recover his guitar technique. And he observed changes in the Black recording market, as well as new niches in the White market.
Most importantly for him and Sam Gary was their meeting in the show
John Henry which tried to base itself on Black folklore ? which is where Blues was supposed to belong. The star was Paul Robeson and Josh had an important role as
Blind Lemon a wandering blues singer. So Josh and Sam were introduced to a new audience and three significant individuals.
The audience were fans of jazz (particularly the simpler forms) and its supposed origins. They were relatively affluent and politically liberal if not out-and-out socialist. Understandably, few of them could afford to be Black.
The first significant individual was Leornard De Paur, the musical director of
John Henry with a background in arranging for and conducting choirs of trained singers in the old concert spiritual tradition. Josh engaged him to take a foursome consisting of him and brother Bill with Sam and a future civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, and turn them into a gospel quartet. They became
Josh White and his CaroliniansAnother individual was John Hammond, who had organised the
Spirituals to Swing concert and was keen to put on record musicians who would advance his vision of the roots of Jazz. Josh ? with and without the Carolinians ? was just what he needed.
The third individual was Alan Lomax the folk music collector with a mission to bring the music to 'the people'. In Wald's analysis Lomax went as far as he could with authentic performers like Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and then turned to more polished singers with more tenuous folky connections ? Burl Ives for White Folk Music and Josh for Black. So Josh was recruited to sing with the
Golden Gate Quartet and others at a 1940 concert organised at the White House by Lomax and Eleanore Roosevelt.
The concert was recorded for the Library of Congress and was archived, not released. But Josh's commercial recording career began ? much according to John Hammond's agenda. The first records were issued on the jazz label
Blue Note (with Sidney Bechet) and the educationally-minded
Musicraft as themed albums ? literally books like photo albums into which 78's were inserted. One of the albums was
Chain Gang with Sam and the rest of the Carolinians singing.
The next album Josh sang on was the Almanac Singers'
Ballad For John Doe ? appallingly timed with its left-wing anti-war message just as Stalin was forced to join the War on our side, dragging the American left with him.
She's A Married Woman was recorded between these album sessions. Again, it was with jazz musicians (Edmond Hall and Israel Crosby). Josh brought along his now best buddy Sam ? they would stay friends for life, singing and playing together when they could ? even though the songs were not like the Carolinians' repertoire. One or both of them must have made the connection between the phrase
Great God Almighty and the stuff they usually did together. 'What a good idea!' they thought ? except that it wasn't.
If you think She's A Married Woman is a mismatch of styles, listen to what Josh recorded shortly after with
Libby Holman. Having been a successful torch singer and notorious scarlet woman, Holman tried to re-invent herself across the racial divide as a politically-informed blues singer. So she hired Josh to teach her. I think she
could have made a decent copyist of her Black heroines, but she felt it was more sincere to keep something of her old style. Oh dear!
From their first album (Yes, another three-disc album)
Blues Till Dawn, here's
Baby, Baby ?based, presumably, on
See See Rider:
Brownie McGhee has the last word on Josh White in 1942. Still based in Greenville, he made a trip to Washington to do a show with Sonny Terry. From Elijah Wald:
Brownie McGhee ... says that after the gig all the important folk people came over and told him that he had to move to New York because "they didn't have any blues singers up there; that Josh White was the only one, and he'd gone white." McGhee laughingly adds that when he got to New York and met Josh, "when i saw how much money he was making, I said, 'Hey, show me how to go white too.''"
PS
Stefan Wirtz also has a discography of Sam Gary.
