Don White

A studio photograph from the '30s shows what looks like something of an extended Appalachian string band, including a piano player, a mandolinist whose instrument is almost bigger than he is, two fiddlers, a guitarist, an upright bassist, a banjoist, and a girl who seems to be holding a fife (although it could also be the sawed-off barrel of a shotgun). It is quite easy to find out what these people are. They are a band called the Briarhoppers, which was still going strong out of its Charlotte, NC, base nearly 75 years later. Telling the names of these people are is another story. Coming up with a complete list of Briarhoppers members is much more difficult than getting through Charlotte at rush hour; and that's saying something. There is a good chance Don White is one of the folks in these older pictures. In 2002, when White was advertised as the only original Briarhoppers member still working in the group, he was only 91 years old, meaning his claim as an original member was believable. His name definitely shows up among the players first assembled for the band by Charlotte's WBT producer Charles H. Crutchfield in 1934 for a series of live broadcasts. These players, such as John McAllister, Clarence Etters, Jane Bartlett, Billie Burton, Thorpe Westerfield, and Homer Drye, are largely mysteries as far as old-time music scholars are concerned. White joined up with the group after appearing on stations in Charleston, WV, and Greenville, SC. His real name was Walden Whytsell, but he seems to have left that hanging on a country fence somewhere. White was still in the Briarhoppers when it became consolidated behind the country duo of Whitey & Hogan, who wandered in from nearby Gastonia where they had met manufacturing a cord fabric used in automobile tires. Arval Hogan and...