One of B.B. King’s earliest blues idols and influences was his cousin Booker, better know as the Memphis blues singer/guitarist Bukka White. Booker, who was born on November 12, 1909 and began recording in 1930, showed young Riley, as King was known before he became the “Beale Street Blues Boy,” that there were possibilities beyond the Delta. And that notion burned in King like a five-alarm fire.
What made White so inspiring? It wasn’t just that he’d made it out of Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, and got his voice and playing pressed up on those shellac Victors that could be heard all over the world. Or that he lived in the big city, although King did love visiting him there before he relocated to Memphis himself. It was White’s music: bristling with primal energy and capped by a high singing style that cut through any room he played. He also played slide guitar, and while King has never been able to master that element of blues playing, he remains smitten with slide to this day, citing Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker among his favorite bluesmen.
Judging by the videos of White’s performances from the ’60s and ’70s — and the 33-rpm LPs he made after his ’60s rediscovery by guitarist John Fahey — Victor’s talent scouts must have asked him to tone down for the benefit of their crude disc cutting machinery. His initial batch of 13 recordings made in Memphis, including three sides with fellow guitar slinger Memphis Minnie for accompaniment, didn’t make much of a splash in the blues world. So he hustled gigs in Memphis and the Delta, and held day jobs until a twist of fate led him to shoot an attacker in the thigh in 1937, earning White a sentence in the still-notorious and still-operating Mississippi penitentiary Parchman Farm.
That was certainly bad luck, as anybody who has read Alan Lomax’s chilling account of life in Parchman in his epic blues odyssey The Land Where the Blues Began can tell you. But the silver lining was that Alan’s father John took his folk song recording expedition for the Library of Congress to that houscow in 1939, giving inmate White an opportunity to paste down two of his most famous songs: “Shake ‘Em On Down” and “Poor Boy.” Both have been passed along through the decades, most notably by Mississippi Fred McDowell, R.L. Burnside, and the North Mississippi All Stars. White also recorded his “Parchman Farm Blues” in those sessions, which Gibson Firebird exponent Johnny Winter recorded in the late ’60s, as did John Mayall, Cactus, and Blue Cheer.
Once released White spent the next few decades playing gigs at bars, parties, and street corners, and holding down day jobs again. When Dylan covered one of White’s Lomax recordings, “Fixin’ to Die Blues,” on his 1962 debut Fahey and his crew of country blues die-hards began searching for the song’s author. Inspired by White’s song “Aberdeen, Mississippi,” Fahey sent a letter to White in that town care of general delivery. It was forwarded to White’s home in Memphis, where he was working in a tank factory.
Like all the great rural blues stylists who made ’60s comebacks, White’s manner of performing was unvarnished by time. He still had a rough-edged gargle to his voice and a slash to his playing — both inspired by his idol, the gospel-blues innovator Blind Willie Johnson. White played a National resonator guitar most often in an open E tuning similar to Skip James, who took a more ornate and shivery approach than White’s declamatory style. And when White played slide he sometimes placed the guitar on his lap and used a steel rod to produce his whinnying voice-like sound.
White recorded for Fahey’s Takoma Records and other labels, and was part of a famed Delta blues showcase at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival that also included James, Howlin’ Wolf, and Mississippi John Hurt. One of White’s most popular albums teamed him with Furry Lewis. Furry Lewis, Bukka White & Friends: Party! At Home was cut live at Lewis tiny apartment in Memphis in 1968 and captures an insouciant sound that would be reflected in the North Mississippi juke joint revival of the ’90s.
The rough ‘n’ tumble bluesman died of pancreatic cancer in 1977, yet he’s still audible not only in the legacy of his own recordings, but in the playing of B.B. King. The blues giant has explained many times that the trilling and sliding he does on Lucille’s strings was inspired by his cousin Booker.