The “irreverent” blues band Jack White adores
Anyone whose seen It Might Get Loud, the 2009 guitar summit that bought together Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, U2’s The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes, will vividly remember that brilliant opening scene in which White makes a diddly bow out of a plank of wood, an old coke bottle and a guitar string. Not only is watching White rock out on the homemade instrument cool as hell, but it also perfectly captures White’s entire ethos – that the best music is usually the least pompous.
Born in Detroit in 1975, Jack White learned to play drums, piano and guitar at an early age. While playing in various local bands, he took up an apprenticeship at Muldoon Studios upholsterers, forming a band with owner Brian Muldoon. After releasing a three-track EP under the name The Upholsterers, Jack left Muldoon Studios to set up his own upholstery business, Third Man Upholstery, marrying a bartender called Meg White in 1996. A year later, after Meg sat down behind Jack and started playing a rudimentary drum pattern while he was practising guitar, the pair decided to form The White Stripes. The duo’s roughshod form of garage blues won them huge critical acclaim, and Jack White remains one of the most revered guitarists of his generation.
Considering White’s impact on contemporary rock, it’s no wonder his influences are the object of so much curiosity. As well as rock giants like Led Zeppelin, of which he once said, “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like them”, White has previously cited Loretta Lynn as a key influence: “I fell in love immediately, somehow,” he told CBS in 2005. “I think that Loretta Lynn is the greatest female singer/songwriter of the 20th century.”
White is also indebted to the great Bob Dylan, who, though less reflective of the blues style that underpins so much of White’s work, exhibits that restless spirit so many aspiring rock musicians find utterly intoxicating. “Do not trust people who call themselves musicians or record collectors who say they don’t like Bob Dylan or the Beatles,” he once said. “They do not love music if those words come out of their mouths.”
But perhaps even more influential were Mississippi blues musicians like Son House, Robert Johnson and, of course, The Mississippi Sheiks. A Depressions-era guitar and fiddle group are widely regarded as one of the earliest rock bands. “This was the early days of a group of people getting together to plan an attack,” White told The Guardian in 2013. “They were irreverent, too…these guys were saying very irreverent things about sex and racial relations that you’d think they wouldn’t get away with”. Perhaps best known for their 1930 single ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’, surely the most-covered song in the entire blues canon, The Mississippi Sheiks provide essential listening for anyone interested in the development of American rock music.
Listen to Jack White’s cover of ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’ below.
