Josh White Jr.

Josh White Jr. (US)

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 Josh White Jr. celebrates his 70th anniversary in show business in 2014 – 70 incredible years and a phenomenal legacy.

He began as a child star performing and recording with his legendary father Josh White, an original Carolina Piedmont blues player who pioneered the blues, spirituals and songs of social conscience – first on New York’s radio, nightclub, Broadway, film and concert stages and then on to the whole world in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Josh, Jr. continues to carry forward his father’s immense musical and social activist legacy, taking his audiences back to the times when House of the Rising Sun, Strange Fruit, One Meatball, The House I Live In, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, and Waltzing Matilda first became popular songs. He recalls the experiences he shared with people like Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Bojangles, Leadbelly, Joe Louis, Eartha Kitt, Woody Guthrie, Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Dorothy Gish, Burl Ives, and Odetta.

But Josh Jr. has also established his own musical and activist legacy since becoming a solo artist in 1961, with 25 albums including self-penned positive message songs along with the songs his father made famous.

He has toured the world’s greatest concert stages, starred in four TV concert specials, is a TONY Award winning actor, educator and teacher, humanitarian and passionate idealist, and a popular children’s performer. In 1980 he was named the “Voice of the PEACE Corps”, and has sung for presidents, prime ministers, the Pope, the imprisoned and the poorest of the poor around the world.

Josh White Jr. is a living link to 20th Century African-American history, the history of the blues, and to a legacy of artistry and activism.   

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