Bukka White
Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White (November 12, 1906 – February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. His first full-length biography, The Life and Music of Booker “Bukka” White: Recalling the Blues (2024), has been published by the University Press of Mississippi.
White moved from the hill country to work on a farm at Swan Lake in the Mississippi Delta. He was a fan of Charley Patton, telling friends, “I want to come to be a great man like Charlie Patton”. He said he never met Patton, though he also claimed to have done so, although this is doubted. White was approached by Ralph Lembo, a white store owner and talent scout, who saw him walking past his store in Itta Bena with a guitar. Lembo took him and his friend Napoleon Hairiston to Memphis, Tennessee, in May 1930 for White’s first recording session with Victor Records. Like many other bluesmen, the recordings comprised country blues and gospel music. The gospel songs were done in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, with a female backing singer accentuating the last phrase of each line. Of the fourteen songs recorded, Victor released two under the name Washington White, two gospel songs on one record, released in 1930, and two country blues on the other, released in 1931. Victor published his photograph in 1930.
White’s mother died in 1933, and in 1934 he married Susie Simpson, a niece of George ‘Bullet’ Williams, a harmonica player whom White had started playing with at Glendora in 1932. White and his second wife started farming near Aberdeen, back in the Mississippi hill country east of Houston. He probably first went to Chicago in 1935, travelling from St. Louis with Peetie Wheatstraw, where he made friends with Big Bill Broonzy, Washboard Sam, Memphis Slim, and Tampa Red.