Sat 20 June – Doc White

Blues: vocals, banjitar, mandolin, guitar,  and percussion.

 

Doc was found abandoned in a house in Adelaide, South Australia by African-American Mormon missionaries. Spirited back to the US in a steamer trunk and raised on a peculiar musical diet of pre-war acoustic blues and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Doc rejected the Lord in favour of the devil’s music. He picked up a coveted 1935 D42 Martin guitar in a pawnshop by swapping it for a first edition of the Book of Mormon signed by Joseph Smith that came into his possession by dubious and unspecified means.

 

Returning to Australia as a young man after a very public stoush with the Mormon church in Utah, he took up professional long-distance swimming and still holds the record for the Glenelg to Somerton ocean swim he set in 1971. Although professional long-distance swimming paid better than music, the siren call of the blues was too hard to ignore. 40 years later Doc is still wanted for questioning in Salt Lake City and still playing the blues.