travsd

Bukka White

Today is the birthday of Delta blues guitarist and singer Booker T. Washington White, a.k.a Bukka White (1909-1977). A native of Aberdeen, Mississippi, he was the first cousin of B.B. King’s mother. One of the seminal open-tuning blues slide players, he cut his first record for Victor in 1930, and was still recording through the folk and blues revival of the 1960s.

This amazing clip dates from that period, notable for the crazy mix of percussive fingerpicking and slide work. How is possible to have any flesh left on your bones after playing like that?

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.

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