UK-based multi-genre Jamaican musician has died

LONDON:

William Joseph White, a pioneering Jamaican multi-genre star who died in London recently, was a man whose musical creations will live on. ‘Joe White’, as he was popularly called, was born on September 4, 1941, in Kingston, Jamaica, and died on September 26 in Hackney, east London, where he lived for many years.

White grew up in Kingston with his mother, Veronica Topey, a diminutive and resourceful single parent, as his biological father was absent during his early childhood. He went to the famous Alpha Boys’ School at South Camp Road in Kingston, where he learnt tailoring and became a master tailor.

Music, however, was the everlasting love of his life and he became one of Jamaica’s most gifted musician, songwriter, singer, arranger and record producer. White’s career took off in 1957 with Punch You Down, followed by Now and Forever More in 1958 and Sinners 1959, all of which he wrote, arranged and sang.

His biggest hit was Every Night in 1966, which he wrote and sang along with Chuck for Pottinger. Other hits followed, including My Love For You, sung by him and Chuck, and So Close, written by him and sung with Della Spence in the momentous year that saw HIM Emperor Haile Selassie visiting Jamaica in April 1966.

DISILLUSIONED

White complained bitterly that he did not achieve his just financial rewards, which would have otherwise ensured his financial well-being.

He said this made him lose heart in the music business, even though he carried on with fellow artistes Ken Boothe and B.B. Seaton to form the show band Conscious Minds in the 1970s. The band released a few singles and worked with The Wailers.

B.B. Seaton of The Gaylads played lead guitar, Maurice Roberts (also of The Gaylads) played bass, while Ken Boothe and Joe White played the organ, depending on which one of them was singing. Seaton negotiated a deal with Byron Lee of Byron Lee and the Dragonnaires, who owned Dynamics studio at Bell Road, St Andrew, to get studio time. The result was My Jamaican Girl, written and sung by B.B. Seaton, which was number one in the Jamaican charts and a popular hit in England, USA and Canada where the Jamaican diaspora community lived.

As with record producers before, Joe White said he got no money out of this hit and the band broke up as a result. He went to do live work with the regrouped former Skatalites led by the brilliant tenor saxophonist Tommy McCook, who loved White’s erudite musicianship.

White learnt to play the melodica and some of the astounding results were Blackboard Jungle and Rougher Than Rough for the singer and record producer Derrick Harriott, and the massive hit Merry Up for singer and record producer Glen Brown (deceased years ago), but once again, he said he didn’t get any royalties from the huge record sales.

Sad and disillusioned, White went to England in 1976, as his mother had died and he was only surviving by doing live work with the Skatalites. In 1976 he wrote and sang his biggest reggae hit of the 1970s Pretty Black Girl for record producer Harry Mudie from Spanish Town, St Catherine. His marriage to the ‘pretty black girl’ of whom the song was written, failed.

BECAME SELF-RELIANT

White worked at several studios in England but suffered the same exploitation as he faced in Jamaica. To survive, he became self-reliant and opened and ran his successful retail shop in the famous Ridley Road Market in Dalston, east London, where he specialised and delighted in selling women’s clothes and accessories.

White was always a dapper and well-dressed man and was very courteous to the ladies, but he became very distrustful of people, due to his bad experiences in the music industry, and became increasingly reclusive. Nevertheless, music was in his blood and he produced the EP Us in the Same World and was working on a tribute album to another great Jamaican melodica player and record producer, Augustus Pablo, nee Horace Swaby, who died in 1999.

White’s close friend and confidante Ingrid Monplaisir, who gave the eulogy and took care of all his funeral arrangements at the Islington Crematorium in East Finchley, North London, says she will bury his ashes in Jamaica in 2024.

Long live the great Joe White, one of Jamaica’s musical giants whose music will live on eternally.