The son of a preacher, Josh White, as a child, follows in the footsteps of blind
guitarist-evangelist Blind Joe Taggart in the Carolinas. He discovered the
humiliation and violence suffered by blacks there. Josh decided to leave the
South for New York, where he embarked on a career as a musician and led a
radical political struggle that got him into trouble during the McCarthy era.
From 1930 onwards, he recorded religious pieces, ballads and blues.
His guitar playing, which happily blended that of Lonnie Johnson and Carolinian
fingerpicking (strings touched with five fingers), wa...