Jack White’s favourite musicians of all time
Jack White serves as something of a history book about the relevance of blues music. With The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, and his solo music, White has persistently turned to that good old-fashioned genre and, in doing so, made it his own.
Trying to examine precisely where Jack White’s influences come from is a difficult task indeed. He has a seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of blues music, and the genre itself has several key figures, unknown artists and a depth and breadth of historical importance.
Yet White has gone on record to state the influence of particular artists on many occasions. As such, we are slowly able to piece together where his musical loves stem from. Perhaps the first worth mentioning are the masters of blues-rock, Led Zeppelin. White would perform alongside Jimmy Page in the guitar documentary It Might Get Loud and once said that Zeppelin are “an immovable force in music”, claiming he doesn’t “trust anyone who doesn’t like them”.
Anyone working in the world of blues and folk worth their salt ought to pay reverence to one of the genre’s greats, Bob Dylan. Dylan’s influence is just about as far-reaching as you can get, and pretty much anyone remotely interested in music has come across the name. White agrees with this sentiment, having once said: “Do not trust people who call themselves musicians or record collectors who say they don’t like Bob Dylan. They do not love music if those words come out of their mouths.”
White also gave great respect to a band he considers the world’s first-ever rock band, The Mississippi Shieks. They were a Depression-era guitar and fiddle group in the vein of Son House and Robert Johnson. White said 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.”
Straying slightly from the traditional sound of blues is The Gun Club, a rock band formed in 1979 in Los Angeles. Their sound was a combination of blues and punk and is often credited with the term ‘cowpunk’. White said of the band: “The songwriting of Kid Congo Powers and Jeffrey Lee Pierce has the freshest white take on the blues of its time. ‘Sex Beat,’ ‘She’s Like Heroin to Me’, and ‘For the Love of Ivy’. Why are these songs not taught in schools?”
Also to be included on White’s list of his influences and his favourite musicians of all time include Blind Willie McTell – who Dylan also loved, and White dedicated the De Stijl album to – Wanda Jackson, Johnny Cash and Charley Patton. Check out the complete list of Jack White’s musical loves below.
Jack White’s favourite musicians:
- The Flat Duo Jets
- Led Zeppelin
- Son House
- Captain Beefheart
- Loretta Lynn
- The Gun Club
- Bob Dylan
- The Mississippi Sheiks
- Rita Hayworth
- Iggy and The Stooges
- Blind Willie McTell
- Wanda Jackson
- The Monks
- Johnny Cash
- Charley Patton
- The Beatles
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