Here's the quote on JW's website (quote increased in size for readability):
Here's the article that it came from, with the relevant bits excerpted:
How very witty of her to make note of the man's complexion and his last name - and from those two pieces of oh-so-relevant information make assertions about his music that demonstrate her utter cluelessness with regard to whatever the hell she's talking about.
The Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All Time: The Complete List
By LA Weekly Fri., May 25 2012
"Considering that most all of today's popular music -- be it rock, pop, dance or rap -- sprang from genres pioneered by black musicians, being all Caucasian about your songs is to literally betray your roots. To qualify as one of our whitest musicians, then, requires more than a pasty complexion, it requires a near-total disregard for jazz, blues and soul or, even worse, a complete whitewashing of them. Without further ado, then, here are 20 performers who put the you-know-what in honky-tonk."
-Ben Westhoff
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsoun ... me_com.php
#12. Jack White
"Even beyond his name, Jack White is about as white as they come, both literally (does he ever go out into the sun? Dude must have a Vitamin D deficiency) and when it comes to his music. His songs are often little more than de-fanged blues, lacking the passion and grizzled realness that makes the genre speak to so many people."
-Linda Leseman
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsoun ... php?page=3
Add: And it wasn't just her comments that were offensive, but also the way the list was introduced:
"[It] requires more than a pasty complexion, it requires a near-total disregard for jazz, blues and soul or, even worse, a complete whitewashing of them." And: "being all Caucasian about your songs is to literally betray your roots."
Could anyone who is actually familiar with Jack White's music ever imagine that he has a "near-total disregard" for the blues? Or that he has been "completely whitewashing" them? He has "betrayed his roots" by "being all Caucasian" about his songs? What??
I think we all know that Jack White has been very vocal in paying homage to early black blues musicians from Son House to Blind Willie McTell, and everyone in between. The idea that anyone would accuse him of neglecting the roots of the blues tradition is just utterly ludicrous. Probably more than any other rock musician of his era, he has been the flag-bearer for honoring the past legacy of the blues and carrying it forward into the future.
So far, there are a number of complaints in the comments section on the dumb list; but most of them are complaining about the whole idea being 'racist' and malicious and etc. Not really any vocal defenses of Jack White and his devotion to the blues.
