Happy Birthday Bukka White!

On this day in 1909, Booker T. "Bukka" White was born in Houston, Mississippi, a small farming town south of Tupelo in the Hill Country. White learned to play the fiddle from his dad, a part-time musician, later picking up the guitar. At the age of fourteen, White went to Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta, to live with an Uncle.

While living in Clarksdale, White is said to have met blues legend Charley Patton, who "smartened him" in the ways of the blues. While working as a farm hand, White would play juke-joints and parties, but he would soon leave the Delta to travel the South and play his blues for spare change. Realizing that he wouldn't be able to make a living with his music, White worked in a number of fields; he played ball in the Negro Leagues and tried his hand at boxing for a while.

Although White's career sputtered out by the end of the 1930s, he was "rediscovered" during the folk-blues explosion of the 1960s. White would subsequently make a splash on the college coffeehouse and folk festival circuit, playing the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 and touring with the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe the following year. A sharp dresser and an entertaining and charismatic performer, White would continue to tour and record until his death from cancer in 1977.

Join us today in celebrating the life and career of blues great Booker T. White!

Related Content: Bukka White Profile

Photo courtesy Legacy Recordings