I’m on record as being a fan of Jack White. Indeed, I consider Elephant one of the ten best records of the last decade.
Check out #7, HERE.
I have followed his career, within and outside The White Stripes, with pleasure and incredulity. How is it possible, I still wonder, that a two-piece act with such a down-and-dirty blues style could break through to a massive audience?
Two simple answers: one, Jack White made enough noise for (at least) three people, so the band’s sound did the improbable, going with more-is-more instead of the less-is-more one might expect from a guitar/drum combo (add to that the drummer has the chops of a little kid learning to play…and I mean that in a good way). Having seen them perform, in an outdoor venue notorious for it’s shitty fidelity, I was absolutely astonished that White was not only able to fill all that space, he was able to make it sound like a tiny night club. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it, and for a music geek like me, it’s one of the few things outside sports where I felt like I was watching a real-life superhero before my eyes. The second, less obvious answer has less to do with White’s considerable talent and appeal (he just willed that music into being, with minimal compromise and maximum middle-finger in the air inevitability: you met him on his own terms or you rolled on by, oblivious and unsaved). No, the success of White’s vision (and, to a lesser extent, his two-man-band brethren The Black Keys, at least when they were still mining the blues idiom –check out #5 HERE and HERE) had to do with the fact that the music he was name-checking, imitating and repurposing (I mean that in a good way) is irresistible and utterly American, if mostly unknown and definitely WAY underappreciated. I’m talking about old school pre-World War II blues. I think the facts speak for themselves: once people are turned on to these old sounds, they like what they hear. But the blues are not unlike jazz, on myriad levels: people may be interested but it’s intimidating to try and tackle that back catalog. Where to begin? Who to begin with? This is why I have always had love for everyone from The Yardbirds to The Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin, even at their most derivative, because the blues legends they emulated got more press thanks to their efforts. And with all of those (and many other) bands, the love and worship was genuine. Jack White has done as much as any single artist these last ten years to preach the glories of the blues, and the more popular he gets, the more people are turned on to this treasure trove of Americana. That is a win/win in pretty much every regard.
So it is with extreme pleasure and gratitude that I read about the work he’s been doing to up the ante (the complete story, via The Guardian and which I highly recommend, can be found HERE).
Long story short: White is working to release TONS of old blues music via his label ThirdMan Records.
Here’s a taste:
“It’s important to go back and cleanse your palate,” he argues. “If you like punk rock now, there were people who did this with way more things against them than a suburban kid who goes to a guitar shop or someone buys him one and he starts singing punk songs. There’s beauty in that, too, but to be black and Southern in 1920 and have no rights … that exemplifies struggle.”
White, of course, no longer has to struggle, but deserves credit for using his success and fame to promote musicians that are far from household names. “The beauty of Third Man Records is we’re not in business to make money. That sounds pretentious, but it’s true,” he argues. “We’re here to make things exist that we think are beautiful. Some people might go out and buy a Ferrari or something, but I would rather spend my time and energy in releasing these records. If only a thousand people get something out of them, it’s still something that makes me and the people here feel excited, because they know the power of this music.”
In summary: even if he had not been making worthwhile music for the last decade and change (and he has, thanks very much!), the work White is currently doing to ensure this rare and too-obscure American artistry is finding an audience –and not disappearing down the sinkhole of post 20th Century ambivalence– makes him a national treasure, worthy of our gratitude.
