Clarence White - Biography
By J Poet
Clarence White was a guitar player, singer and bluegrass musician best known by rockers for his time in The Byrds. He was a much in demand session player, both before and after his Byrds association and was in the process of recording his first solo album when he was killed by a drunken driver on July 15, 1973. He was only 29.
Clarence LeBlanc was born in Lewiston, Maine. The family Anglicized its French name to White after moving to Burbank in 1954. White and his brothers Roland and Eric Jr. started a country band called Three Little Country Boys and country singer Joe Maphis soon spotted them. He helped get them a gig on the Andy Griffith Show. They changed their name to The Kentucky Colonels and before the British Invasion and folk rock swamped the folk revival, they cut several highly regarded albums marked by their blazing instrumental prowess, especially Clarence White’s guitar picking. Standouts are New Sound of Bluegrass (1963 Briar), Appalachian Swing! (1964 World Pacific, 1993 Rounder) with White’s jaw dropping guitar work up front, Long Journey Home (1964 Vanguard, 1991 Vanguard) recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival and The White Brothers Live in Sweden (1979 Rounder) a posthumous release of a short White Brothers reunion tour. He was also the guitar player on the legendary album New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass (1963 Elektra, 1963) with banjo players Eric Weissberg and Marshall Brickman. One song from the album, "Dueling Banjos," became a hit years later when it was used on the soundtrack of the film Deliverance. 33 Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals (2000 Sierra) is an album of homemade demos from 1962 that show off White’s brilliant flat-picking prowess.
After the Colonels broke up, White became a session player and cut tracks with The Monkees, the Gosdin Brothers, and Gene Parsons’ group Nashville West. Nashville West made one album in 1967 that has been reissued by Rev-Ola, Nashville West (2003 Rev-Ola.) White joined the Byrds in 1968 and played on untitled (1970 Columbia, 2000 Columbia), Byrdmaniax (1971 Columbia, 2000 Columbia), and their last studio effort Farther Along (1971 Columbia, 2000 Columbia.)
White had been playing sessions during his gig with The Byrds, and went back to session work when McGuinn broke up the band. He played on Linda Ronstadt’s Hand Sown Home Grown (1969 Capitol), Randy Newman’s 12 Songs (1969 Reprise), The Everly Brothers’ Stories We Could Tell (1972 RCA), Jackson Browne (1972 Asylum), Maria Muldaur (1973 Reprise) and dozens of other sessions for people like Arlo Guthrie, Gene Parsons, Rita Coolidge, Phil Ochs and Joe Cocker.
In 1973 he was hired to back up his hero Bill Monroe, but Monroe didn’t show, so the band cut an album without him. Muleskinner (1973 Warner, 1995 Sierra) included Richard Greene, Bill Keith, Dave Grisman and Peter Rowan. After a brief reunion tour with his brothers that’s captured on The White Brothers Live in Sweden (1979 Rounder) album, White started work on an electric solo album. He’d only finished four tracks, when a drunken driver killed him.
