Jim...
I'm surprised to find someone who's such a fan of Josh Sr.'s music. While B.B and Muddy and Robert Johnson get so much visibility in the media, Josh is still a bit of an underground figure. Might be a remnant of the old Blacklist Thing as he was lumped into that whole left wing thing because of the gigs at Cafe Society in the Forties. Glad to see he got the stamp though. I was sorry to have missed that celebration in DC. So many old friends where there and it would have been great to see them.
I watched a zillion Josh White Shows back in the sixties...Turbo Attenborough was his bass player for many of those gigs...Sr. always had sore fingers from the National picks he wore while playing...how he required his chair to be just the right type with a certain number of towels folded and taped to the seat so that when he laid his leg over the back and tapped the seat with his foot the sound wouldn't bleed into the mikes...when he broke a string in performance, he'd finish on five strings, sing 'Tobacco Road' acappela (the audience always had to provide the two pickup clap-beats at the end of each bar) and change the string at the same time, tune it up and finish with full guitar accompanyment. Terrific performer.
What amazed me most though, was his ability to do that same show night after night after night, same songs, same order, and still make it look and sound like he was doing it for the first time.
One of the best I ever saw.