A Fine Artist, a Clown, a Large Girl with a Fuzzy Head of Hair
So now we begin to get to a place where Josh White’s story intersects with those of other people already discussed (though not Van Morrison, who will not be born for a few years yet). For instance, in 1941 he began doing a nightclub act with Lead Belly at the Village Vanguard in New York. It was a bit of an awkward pairing, at least at first; though the two were both Southern bluesmen, they were very different in style and temperament. I love how Max Gordon, the Vanguard’s owner, describes their first rehearsals:
I turned on the work-lamp, wiped a table clean, and put a bottle of rye on the table. I hung around, watching and listening, saying nothing. Not until they finished the bottle did they say anything to me. So I put another bottle on the table. This went on for a week. And one day, twenty bottles later, Nick [Ray, who had suggested putting the duo together] said he thought they were ready.
Later, Gordon was quoted as saying “The greatest conversations ever heard at the Vanguard was the carving out of the guitars between Lead Belly and Josh White.” The combination of Belly’s thunderous 12-string and deep, husky voice with White’s delicate fretwork and silky baritone must have really been something; sadly no audio or video seem to exist.1 They did later make some studio recordings together, which maybe gives a little bit of the flavor:
But they were never entirely simpatico. White is quoted in Elijah Wald’s book as saying, “He was a fine artist. But Leadbelly was a clown. He played up to the Uncle Tom image.”
Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry also turned up in New York around this time. They had been playing in Washington, D.C. where, according to McGhee, people told them to come 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.”
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