Clarence White - the revolutionary bluegrass guitarist who led a tragically short life

Before his death at just 29, Clarence White revolutionised the role of the guitar in bluegrass, played on sessions for many of the top artists of the '60s and '70s and was a member of the influential rock band The Byrds.

The new audio documentary White Lightning features fresh interviews with his friends, a grandson and fellow musicians, including former Byrds drummer Gene Parsons and legendary guitarist Ry Cooder, who first saw White play with his family band The Kentucky Colonels.

"[White] had advanced into something that I had never seen before. I was fascinated, and so was everybody else who sat and watched." Cooder says.

According to Ry Cooder, you can compare the guitar playing of Clarence White to the cornet playing of legendary jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke.

"They talk about Bix as a guy who played connected lines with a beautiful, picturesque kind of feeling like Clarence has."

Cooder, about as respected a musician as you can find, is one of many professional guitarists who hold Clarence White in the highest esteem.

In a career that saw him revolutionise the role of the guitar in bluegrass music, record guitar parts for some of the most well-known musicians of the '60s and '70s, and help develop country-rock during his five-year stint as a member of The Byrds, White made a lasting and unique impact on American popular music.

Yet, unlike his contemporaries such as Gram Parsons, White has not always got the recognition he deserves, and since his tragic death in a road accident aged just 29, he has somewhat faded from view.

Clarence White was born Clarence Joseph LeBlanc on 7 June 1944 in Lewiston, Maine.

He was the third child of French-Canadian parents who had moved south of the border from New Brunswick, anglicising their name to White along the way. Like many American families in the first half of the 20th century, the Whites made their way to California.

From the age of 10, White was playing in a family bluegrass band that achieved success under the name The Kentucky Colonels.

Watch The Kentucky Colonels playing on the Andy Griffith Show in 1961:

In the early 1960s, while The Colonels were playing at the legendary Ash Grove folk club in Santa Monica, California, White’s playing caught the ear of Ry Cooder.

"He had advanced into something that I had never seen before”, says Cooder. “I was fascinated, and so was everybody else who sat and watched."

One of the other musicians amazed by White was Jerry Garcia, who would follow the Colonels to the East Coast of the United States and later found fame as the guitarist and singer for The Grateful Dead.

Then there was a young blues guitarist who admired White’s playing but only got to talk to him years later.

According to Gene Parsons - White’s friend, collaborator and bandmate in The Byrds - he and White were backstage at a club in Hollywood in the late 1960s when a knock came at the door and a well-dressed man asked if Clarence was around.

“I said, ‘Clarence, there’s a guy here to see ya!’” Parsons recalled. “I said, ‘What’s your name?’, he says, 'Jimi Hendrix'.

"I said, 'It’s Jimi Hendrix!’ and Clarence said, ‘Yeah... let him in'. It turns out Jimi Hendrix was a Clarence White fan!”

In 1965, with the advent of folk-rock, the Kentucky Colonels were no longer able to support themselves playing bluegrass.

White, who by this point had a family to support, picked up a Fender Telecaster guitar and went to work as a session musician.

Before long, he was asked by Gene Parsons to join his band Nashville West. In a couple of years, both musicians ended up playing in The Byrds - one of the biggest and most influential bands to come out of Los Angeles in the 1960s.

White’s contributions to The Byrds' albums like Sweetheart of The Rodeo and (Untitled) cemented his position as one of the most innovative guitarists of the era and helped turn the band into an impressive live act.

Watch The Byrds playing 'You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere' on Playboy TV in 1968:

White and Parsons also made some major technical innovations with the electric guitar.

By utilising parts from a pedal steel guitar, Parsons modified White’s Telecaster so he could bend the B string a whole note, which went a long way towards helping him achieve the blend of country and rock guitar styles he was going for.

The 'StringBender' mechanism, as they called it, has had a lasting effect on guitarists from many different genres, and has been used by guitarists such as Jimmy Page, Brad Paisley and Jack White.

During his time with The Byrds, White also worked as a session musician and played on records by artists like Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Arlo Guthrie, The Monkees and Jackson Browne.

His skill as a guitarist and his genial personality made him very much in demand.

“Clarence was soft spoken, very kind, very confident, and he had a quirky sense of humour,” Parsons says. “He had a very well-developed moral compass.”

By 1973, the Byrds were no longer functioning as a band, and White jumped ship soon after the band’s frontman, and by that point, sole founding member, Roger McGuinn, announced that he'd reformed the band’s original line-up (which did not include White) to record a new album.

Not one to sit around, White started a bluegrass supergroup called Muleskinner and began recording a solo album, bringing in Ry Cooder to play slide guitar on one track.

But that album was never finished. After a show with his brothers in the desert town of Palmdale, just outside Los Angeles, White was hit by a drunk driver as he loaded his equipment into his car. He died in hospital the next morning.

White's funeral was attended by his former Byrds bandmates and many of those who had played with him. Former Byrd Gram Parsons led a sing-along at the graveside.

But tragedy was not done with the White family.

White’s wife Susie had a series of car accidents of her own, which culminated in a horrific 1981 crash that killed her as well as the couple’s son Bradley.

Susie and Clarence's daughter Michelle was left an orphan at just 15 and later raised by her mother’s sister and her husband in Kentucky.

In my conversation with Michelle’s son Brandon, he detailed a lot of what the family had been through as a result of losing both of Michelle’s parents and her brother, as well as alleged financial misdirection from various parties that left Michelle and her children with little to show for White’s talent and hard work.

"It’s just as much sorrow as it is pride," Brandon said.

After White's death, Gene Parsons gave up on music for a few years, asking Warner Records to release him from his contract, but after some time, he slowly started writing and recording again. These days, he still builds StringBenders and is getting ready to release a memoir.

It’s hard to say what Clarence White would have done had he lived, but for years after he died and as The Byrds fell out of fashion, he seemed destined to become somewhat obscure, with his name confined to Byrds biographies and niche bluegrass publications.

Despite The Byrds' huge effect on rock music and White's contemporaries, such as Gram Parsons, being elevated to the level of rock and roll legends, he seemed to fade from the collective conscience.

Yet, thankfully, in recent years, with a rising interest in American roots music and bluegrass, there's been something of a rediscovery.

Over 50 years after White's death, his work is still influencing modern guitar heroes, including younger bluegrass stars like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle.

Hopefully, Clarence White is on the way to receiving the recognition that his peers, collaborators and fans all feel he richly deserves.

Listen to a playlist of (nearly) all of the music used in the piece here.