What now for Jack White?

[doc holiday]

Dr S, Excuse me, I'm still spewing coffee out my nose....
.......made my day!

[catmandu2]

Hmm. Not sure I agree with that analogy, but I'll contemplate it.

I like what Bob said in the clip about folk music being a mechanism of social and political critique, though.

[Jim MacDaniel]

Maybe a better analogy, is White is to Blues (or OT for that matter) as Dylan is to Appalachian.

[catmandu2]

Maybe a better analogy, is White is to Blues (or OT for that matter) as Dylan is to Appalachian.

Interesting. Except that White also plays some barrellhouse, "Delta"-derived and other forms of trad blues. Does Dylan do "Appalachian?"

[Jim MacDaniel]

My point was both artists were inspired by and borrowed from traditions (as did Niles to some degree it would appear ) , but to your point White is definitely more blues, than Dylan is Appalachian.

[John Flynn]

It seems Jack White is to the blues what John Jacob Niles was to Appalachian Music.

I've rarely seen an analogy that was more spot on. I get a similar visceral response listening to each of them. I'm also confident that Mr. White will go on to enjoy the same level of widespread popularity as Mr. Niles, and also the same level of respect in the blues and the old-time communities.

[mrmando]

I've rarely seen an analogy that was more spot on. I get a similar visceral response listening to each of them. I'm also confident that Mr. White will go on to enjoy the same level of widespread popularity as Mr. Niles, and also the same level of respect in the blues and the old-time communities.

I'm not sure Jack wants the "Important as a composer/collector but absolutely unbearable to listen to" tag.

[DrEugeneStrickland]

Both White and Niles come to traditional music as complete outsiders, they have done their research and show us they are in the "know" by exhibiting a collectors sensibilities, having a 360 degree panoramic view of all vernacular folk culture they study.
This is wonderful bait for journalists and arm chair cultural intellectuals who are too busy thinking to react honestly to the actual music both of these men make which ... to be as kind as possible... substitutes real emotion in favor of cheap theatrics.

[JeffD]

My experience of rural music carries a transcendent effect--quite familiar I'm sure to those to whom the music is indigenous,

I have heard it said that the first hillbilly drug was harmony.

[catmandu2]

This is wonderful bait...

I'll pass

[catmandu2]

since white is still "around"...

[Dagger Gordon]

Well here he is on a recent UK Jools Holland show, with a girl playing MANDOLIN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH9HA...feature=relmfu

[JEStanek]

He's like Robert Palmer with actual players!

Jamie

[Don Julin]

I think Jack White is cool! In this day and age where most popular musicians are more about the choreographed dancing, Jack actually plays music and writes songs. I have one teenage kid left at home and he LOVES Jack White. It takes me back to my youth when we all listened to rock guitar "gods". I think the fact that he has been very successful in the music biz at a time when most record companies have closed up shop says something. Besides my friend Dominic is on tour playing bass in his band and Dominic can really play! It may not be traditional old time music but c'mon it is real music played on real instruments by real people. Isn't that something we can all agree is a good thing?

[JeffD]

I like his treatment of this old traditional ballad. Its his own treatment, but it works because Jack used what is good about the ballad. Its an example of taking an old piece we have all heard too much and are tired of, and presenting it in a way we re-discover the original value of the piece.

Great job. No, really, a great job. A contribution to, not an exploitation of, traditional music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCCF-QwPwZk

[Ed Goist]

He's like Robert Palmer with actual players!

Jamie

I'm a huge and unapologetic Jack White fan, so my opinion is admittedly biased!
Here's an interesting article about White's new album "Blunderbuss", and the supporting tour.
Check out this quote:
"In his typical never-stop-working-and-making-it-interesting fashion, Jack White announced that he’ll be touring the album with two separate backing bands, one all-male and one all-female. Not only will he be working with two touring bands, but he’ll be performing different sets with each of the bands while touring the album..."
By the way, regarding White's "all-female" band as seen in the video posted by Dagger above, I recognize Bryn Davies on double bass. Anyone recognize the mandolin player? She looks familiar to me, but I can't quite place her.

[Charles E.]

Well here he is on a recent UK Jools Holland show, with a girl playing MANDOLIN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH9HA...feature=relmfu

That is a really cool little guitar and a really bad hair cut.

[Jeffff]

I live in Chicago. I have seen Muddy Waters. Lonnie Brooks, Son Seals, James Cotton , Willie Dixon and a host of others at places like The Kingston Mines, the Checker Board Lounge and Buddy Guys. I love the blues but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy Stevie Ray, Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore.

Using a musical style as a starting point and interpreting it in a different way doesn't make it phony or empty or soulless.

[catmandu2]

Jack is very compelling for me. I actually had virtually no knoweldge of him--having only heard a few tunes on the radio--until I encountered the (eponymous) original "Jack White" thread. I went to bat for White on the cafe simply because I could glean from just sampling his stuff at the time--mostly, just his contribution for "It Might Get Loud"--that White is an artist. All of the other accolades White deserves aside--he is clearly one of the more prolific and creative figures in modern "roots" (rock, r&b, folk, etc.) music. It was clear to me the track and trajectory White was on a year ago...to see him continuing to produce interesting music in a repertoire of styles is no surprise.

Dagger's link above sees Jack's iconoclastic sensibility challenging yet another atavisitc edifice--male dominance in the music biz

[Paul Kotapish]

Both White and Niles come to traditional music as complete outsiders, they have done their research and show us they are in the "know" by exhibiting a collectors sensibilities, having a 360 degree panoramic view of all vernacular folk culture they study.
This is wonderful bait for journalists and arm chair cultural intellectuals who are too busy thinking to react honestly to the actual music both of these men make which ... to be as kind as possible... substitutes real emotion in favor of cheap theatrics.

Wow. Quite a pronouncement.

I don't fault anyone for actively disliking either John Jacob Niles or Jack White--for their music or for their affectations.

But I take exception to anyone attempting to justify his personal music tastes--no matter how well informed by a huge record collection or years of academic study--via ad hominem attacks on another musician's so-called authenticity, soul, or depth of emotion. From my perspective it's a low form of criticism, and it smacks of schoolyard bullying of kids who aren't wearing the uniform.

White clearly isn't everyone's cup of tea, and Niles was hardly anyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't mean they don't have emotional depth or that they haven't come by their musical expression honestly. There are plenty of credible folk artists (blues, Appalachian, bluegrass, Balkan, Irish, Rembetika, you-name-it) musicians who came to the true vine from some distance, just as there are plenty of artists who were raised in the cradle of a specific culture and wandered far from it over time.

White started playing blues as a teenager in Detroit. That would fit the resumes of any number of more conventional blues artists who have hewn to a more derivative path. Niles was born and bred in Kentucky and lived most of his life on a rural farm there. He began visitations and first-person collecting as a kid. That puts him as "inside" as most ballad singers, no matter how odd his personal expression of the art became over time.

And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who bothers to work on his/her own music--whether I like it on not--has soul.

[catmandu2]

Paul, the good "doctor" hasn't been around for months (although he may be resurrected now that Jack White threads have reemerged ). Shame really--his posts were pretty entertaining, but his platitudes were hardly to be taken seriously

[JeffD]

The arguement, at least as I participated, was never about whether JW had or has a soul, whether or JW is or isn't a good musician, or even whether he was very compelling or not. He is a great musician and a great enterntainer, and there is a lot to like in what he does. If you like that kind of thing you will like his playing of that kind of thing. He does it well. That was never in dispute as far as I am concerned.

I was more narrowly focused on his "old timey" cred. And at the time, the examples of his work I saw did not convince me. The video I referenced above entirely reverses my opinion.

Its a matter of the difference between working with and within a tradition and thereby expanding and extending that tradition and putting your influence into that stream - versus - seeing that a certain genre has a following and claiming it by cursory participation.

Its a narrow battle field, but I think it is an important one.

And I have seen some more JW in the traditional context, and what I see I like.

[catmandu2]

I was more narrowly focused on his "old timey" cred. And at the time, the examples of his work I saw did not convince me. The video I referenced above entirely reverses my opinion.

From my POV, and what essentially fueled the (original) debate--to which I presume you're referring--was Allen's pronouncement regarding White's "cred" (that it began and ended with his acting role in Cold Mountain, or some such) and then it went further as some objected to White on the basis of style, appearance, etc.; determining that White had no claim to OT "cred" because he doesn't look the part, or that other aspects of his work aren't ostensibly consonant with the "old-time" aesthetic--it seemed that some were saying. I think this perception--basing "credibility" on superficial criteria (as though White's involvement in "old-time" music can be accurately assessed merely by his role in a dramatic movie, or by his "appearance" in or outside of the music)--is too easily subscribed to, abdicating the work of assessing value on the merit of an artist's total work. Of course, not everyone "values" art equally. But simply, I'm arguing for less "knee-jerk" reaction based on personal aesthetic "tastes" and rather more consideration of actual content. We would all be wiser to drop our prejudices (as well as be more musically enlightened)

[Mike Bunting]

The "Jack White" thread series is a service for fuddyduds to express their ire. No doubt Jack White himself would be amused, too.

Finally got around to reading this thread. I have to agree with you.

[JeffD]

But simply, I'm arguing for less "knee-jerk" reaction based on personal aesthetic "tastes" and rather more consideration of actual content. We would all be wiser to drop our prejudices (as well as be more musically enlightened)

Its too easy to subscribe to the assumption that a considered opinion is a knee jerk reaction or to assume that the person with the considered opinion is less musically enlightened.

Ahh, but, perhaps I am a fuddydud.