The Legend of Booker's Guitar

Reviews

 

 

Red Lick Records catalogue 185, July-August 2015

 

A relatively short (184 pages) and unusual biography that incorporates not just the eventful musical and non-musical life of Booker White (or, if you prefer, Bukka White), but also that of his favoured guitar, known as Hard Rock.

 

This guitar was gifted by Booker late in life to Keith Perry, a British fan and photographer friend who set about restoring it to former glories, and it is with Keith and Hard Rock that the latter part of the book progresses, right up to 2010 with the guitar being played by Eric Bibb on a track on his hit album, Booker’s Guitar.

 

The story starts in Chickasaw County, Mississippi in the early years of the twentieth century with the birth of Booker. It proceeds to trace his early interest in music, his learning the guitar and his early recordings and brief success in 1930 prior to the onset of the Great Depression. If the economic downturn served to limit on-going recording opportunities, his two year stint in Parchman Farm Penitentiary toward the end of the 1930s (following a shooting incident) didn’t help much either. 

 

On release from Parchman, Booker continued to play and develop strong relationships and friendships with other blues musicians in Chicago (notably Big Joe Williams and Big Bill Broonzy) but his musical career fell away in the 1940s, not to re-surface until his rediscovery in the early 1960s.

 

It was in the 1960s that Booker befriended Keith Perry after being introduced in Newcastle in 1967 by Brownie McGhee, becoming sufficiently close for Booker to gift Hard Rock to his guitar enthusiast friend toward the end of his career and life.

 

Ultimately repaired and brought back to life by Red Lick favourite, Steve Phillips, the book lovingly presents not just the subsequent story of Hard Rock up to the point of engaging Eric Bibb’s interest, but also houses many photos taken by Keith of other guitar legends in its privileged company - including B/B. King (Booker’s nephew), Mark Knopfler, Lonnie Donegan, Derek Trucks, Bob Brozman, Bill Wyman and more.

 

Well written, thoroughly engaging and highly informative, this may not be a conventional biography of a major bluesman but it is certainly a hugely enjoyable one.

 

Record Collector, Issue 439. April 2015

 

ENLIGHTENING STORY OF A GREAT GUITARIST'S GREAT GUITAR...

As acts of gratitude to fans go, sending them the guitar you played for the best years of your life has to rank pretty high, but that's exactly what happened to English photographer Keith Perry shortly before the death of his hero and friend, Bukka White.

 

That uncommon gesture inspires this unlikely book, which tells the story of one of the greatest blues guitar players in history. And what a story! White's humble beginnings in rural Mississippi sees the young man learn the guitar to escape the drudgery of hard labour, only to find himself doing just that in a penitentiary on a charge of murder, which is where legendary folklorist John Lomax discovered him. A couple of decades of obscurity followed, before the blues revival of the 60s finally brought recognition to one of the few surviving contemporaries of Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton.

 

Perry photographed many of his blues heroes, and his friendship with White landed the bluesman's famous National steel guitar in the photographer's lap. Valued today at over £200,000, the guitar - which White's cousin BB King describes as a "holy relic" - has been played by countless stars, before gracing the sleeve of Eric Bibb's 2010 hit album, Booker's Guitar. The cover shot? Of course, Perry took it.

 

 

 

 

R2 Magazine, June 2015

 

Booker T. Washington White - also known as 'Bukka' White - is a true Mississippi blues legend, and had a life befitting that status, well documented here.

 

His name should also be familiar to fans of Bob Dylan and Robert Plant, as both have covered his songs. Because of Booker's international touring after his 'rediscovery' in 1963, he befriended a young press photographer in Newcastle upon Tyne, England - Keith Perry, who offers valuable insights into Booker, the 60s 'blues boom', and several rather famous musicians - and the two kept in touch with each other. Booker eventually sent Keith his National Duolian guitar, which, as Peter relates, then took on a life of its own.

 

Eric Bibb, another major player in this book, was introduced to the instrument - and a song, and then an acclaimed album, released in 2010, ensued. Again, Peter lovingly provides the background details, closing out (for now) a truly fascinating story.

 

 

 

Blues & Rhythm, Issue 398. April 2015

 

As the body of blues-related literature grows at an exponential rate, it starts to take in a much wider range of subject matter than we might once have expected. Here is a case in point – a book only partly about the blues, and more about some of the ways in which the music has had a profound effect on a generation or more of fans around the world. 

 

The first several chapters comprise a brisk, well-written account of Booker (Bukka) White’s life story, including a critical appraisal of White’s recordings, fulsome where praise is due and forthright where the author believes it isn’t. This takes us to White’s death in 1977, and to about halfway through the book. The following chapter flashes back a decade to 1967, and White’s visit to Newcastle with the AFBF, when one Keith Perry – in a way, the real hero of the story – met and photographed him. Perry is a long-time blues enthusiast, a guitar player and a professional photographer with backstage access dating back to the early 1960s. A few years after meeting Booker White, he got the bluesman’s address from Brownie McGhee, and began a correspondence with him, first by letter and then by telephone. Perry sent White photographs and tapes (including tapes of White’s early recordings, which at that point he apparently did not have), and their long-distance relationship seems to have developed into genuine friendship. 

 

In the next chapter, the story takes an unusual turn. It starts with a short history of National Duolian guitars, then Daniels recounts how during one telephone call in 1976, White suddenly decided to give ‘his old guitar’ to this English photographer with whom he had struck up such a friendly connection. Keith Perry paid the postage and packing costs for the guitar (which White apparently called ‘Hard Rock’) and after anxious weeks of waiting, he headed out to Newcastle Airport and picked it up. 

 

I once heard an English singer-guitarist play ragtime blues on an instrument that had been given to him personally (he made sure to tell us, more than once), by Reverend Gary Davis. I was impressed, but I later read of at least two other guitarists with the same story. I concluded that ‘Given to him personally by...’ could mean anything from ‘Bought from...’ to ‘Was once played by...’. But let’s be clear that I don’t believe anything like that to be the case here. Peter Daniels is clearly aware of possible scepticism and even conflicting claims, and deals with both entirely credibly. For one thing, we have a photo of a letter from White telling Keith Perry that the guitar (which he refers to in the letter as ‘Hard Rock’) has been dispatched, as well as other supporting documents. 

 

Perry has accumulated an enviable archive of his photographs, and included here are ones of Big Joe Williams, Son House, B.B. King, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington and more. Some of these are really very fine, and maybe it’s telling that one of the best is of Booker White himself. In later years, when most of the great blues visits had dried up, Perry took to asking other touring guitarists if they would like to see Booker’s guitar. Thus, we have photos of miscellaneous celebrities posing in the reflected glory of this talismanic item, from Lonnie Donegan to Mark Knopfler to Dave Stewart, among others. (Note: there’s plenty of b&w photos in this edition, although I gather there is also a deluxe edition at a higher price that contains many more photos, some in colour.)

 

The last few chapters tell of how, after having been photographed with it, Eric Bibb became fascinated by the guitar, wrote a song about it, which became the title track on one of his albums, and recorded with it. Bibb’s ‘Booker’s Guitar’ is a decent warm-hearted song on a decent album, and Daniels and Perry both evidently set great store by this episode in the guitar’s history. The last photo in the book is of Hard Rock in the hands of Keith Perry himself, probably round about the age Booker White was when he sent the instrument across the Atlantic, and that’s the one you really want to see – to my mind, far more evocative and eloquent than all the ones of rock stars put together.

 

The book is self-published via Lulu.Com, but is professionally assembled and presented, thoroughly annotated and referenced – better than many I’ve seen from major publishers.