Bukka White
American singer-songwriter
Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White (November 12, between 1900 and 1909 – February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. His first full-length biography, The Life and Music of Booker "Bukka" White: Recalling the Blues (2024), has been published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Life and career to the 1950s
Booker T. Washington White was born on a farm south of Houston in northeastern Mississippi. He was born on November 12; various years between 1900 and 1909 are recorded – census data suggests 1904. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White's first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington. White was a first cousin of B. B. King's mother (White's mother and King's maternal grandmother were sisters). His father, John White, was a railroad worker and a musician who performed locally, primarily playing the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and piano. He gave Booker a guitar for his ninth birthday. White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He got married at 16 years old, with his father giving him a new Stella guitar as a wedding present.
The public source identifies “Bukka White” as american singer-songwriter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bukka, White and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q918497. VIAF identifies the subject as 37104423. The Library of Congress control number is n81072535. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1909, 1977 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bukka White” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.